According to the Almada City Council (CMA), in the Setúbal district, this project is based on the Monument to the Dead of the Great War in Luanda — also known as Maria da Fonte —, a statue erected in 1937, which stood out as one of the largest constructions of the Portuguese presence in Africa.
"The monument was dynamited in 1976, one year after Angola's independence, resulting in the dispersion of large blocks of carved stone, although the original pedestal remained intact," the city council recalled in a statement.
Kiluanji Kia Henda creates a series of digital collages based on documentary images of the monument's fragments and the Angolan and Cuban soldiers who participated in its destruction, which give rise to a set of eight posters of fictitious musical bands, printed on a monumental scale.
In the center of the main pool is the work "O Som é o Monumento" — a geometric plinth that reinterprets the shape of a pedestal, transforming it into a speaker.
The city government explains that this structure is used to disseminate a repertoire of Angolan music, which constructs sonic counter-narratives to colonial and imperialist discourse, affirming music as a vehicle of memory, identity and cultural insurgency.
"Through this aesthetic and symbolic operation, the artist resignifies the rubble of the past as a material for invention and resistance, proposing a critical reflection on new ways of celebrating and re-inscribing memory in public space, where sound — music — takes the place of a monument," says the CMA.
The exhibition will be on display until November 15, from Thursday to Saturday, 2 pm to 6 pm.
According to the Almada City Council, Kiluanji Kia Henda is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Luanda, with an artistic practice focused on art as an instrument of historical transmission and reconstruction, through various media — such as photography, video, performance, installation, sculpture, music and avant-garde theater.
Kiluanji Kia Henda is also a co-founder of KinoYetu, a Luanda-based association dedicated to the promotion of the arts, with a special emphasis on film.
Kiluanji Kia Henda's work has been included or curated by several prestigious institutions and events internationally.
His project "Plantação", composed of a hundred sugar canes in aluminum, the "white gold" that was at the origin of the slave trade, was chosen as a Memorial to Enslaved People to be installed in Lisbon, as part of the 2017 Participatory Budget.
