"Something Happened on the Way to Heaven" is the title of this exhibition curated by Luigi Fass, which opens at 5 pm and will run until 10 January 2021, in the space of the Municipal Galleries of Avenida da Índia.
It was from this expectation of the fulfillment of a dream, and of the tragedy, ended in immigration, that the Angolan artist spoke to Lusa during a visit on the eve of the opening of the exhibition, composed of photography, sculpture and installation, with pieces created in 2019, Henda did a residency at the Luma Foundation, in Arles, France, and at the Museo d'Arte Provincia di Nuoro (MAN), in Sardinia.
"I explored this question of expectation, of what makes an immigrant leave Africa or the Middle East towards Europe, a place seen as almost perfect, where he hopes to find peace and well-being, which puts his life at risk. That Paradise, that Heaven, does not exist without the concept of Hell. One does not live without the other, "said the artist born in Luanda in 1979, who won the Frieze Artist Award at the London fair in 2017.
Reflecting on these dreams, and the tragedies, Henda also questioned the Christian ideas associated with these concepts, with a certain religious imaginary and values such as kindness and generosity, with which some migrants grow up in their countries of origin, but will not find in the "desired Paradise".
"On the way there, something happens - 'Something' - and the drowned bodies appear in the Mediterranean that we all know, but we really know little about these people. The sea turns out to be a melting point where all these narratives converge", commented the artist, who in Sardinia found a "paradisiacal nature", but also the "shadows of tragedy".
These reflections are also linked to the origin of migratory movements, he said, "usually wars, diseases, poverty, corruption and bad governance that lead people to leave their countries in search of a better place, and that has happened for many generations, is not now, and it's a global phenomenon. "
In Sardinia, he created his most recent work, from 2020, "The Mantle of Presentation (According to Arthur Bispo do Rosário)", a piece based on the work of this Brazilian artist (1909-1989), which would have been created for when he died and was for Heaven to meet God.
Kiluanji's mantle, which pays homage to the Brazilian artist and follows the same idea, was created with black sheep wool, by Sardinian artisans, and received more than a thousand beads, "applied by African women, also immigrants", in Lisbon , being suspended in the center of the gallery.
Other works included in the exhibition are "Reliquary of a shipwrecked dream" (2019), an installation with a column of salt, a head in black bronze inside a metallic structure, "Ballad geographic of fear" (2019), a series of nine photographs, and "Emigrants that nothing matters to them" (2019), a set of vintage postcards with flamingos in neutral environments.
In collaboration with Publitaxis & Publiroda and CP - Comboios de Portugal, the exhibition "Something Happened on the Way to Heaven" will also feature eighty posters randomly distributed on some of the carriages of the regular trains on the Sintra Line, with images of the work "A Sina de Otelo / Othello's Fate (Act I, II, III and IV) 2013.
