For the residency Noronha & Sousa propose to build a map, which flows into a duo installation, where research meets and finds points of intersection in order to help decipher the different ways in which their people have returned home. These journeys, guided by the need to build other bridges of meaning between South Africa and Mozambique, will question the established concept of “borders” and “migrations” and invites them to rethink the subterranean river that shapes their personal and family history; To look at themselves through the other, that other who is them on the other side of the border.
Their research will be a collective search, opening itself to two paths in a moment - two researches of different techniques - meeting again to build a collective space. In each of these paths, individually (and sometimes also together), they propose to meet with the local community, visit places of interest, research in artistic centres/archives/spaces, as well as participate in classes, workshops focused on specific techniques which will serve in installation.
The work carried out by each one individually will always be shared with the other in order to enrich the process, and to widen the field of artistic research.
Afluentes will explore a "there" so close, a "here" so far away. A dual exercise of displacement, the course of a river, which, stirred only by a slight current, allows one to see what was sedimented at its bottom. A past to be unearthed: to hear the stories of another place, of another past that nobody wants to hear. Thus they walk guided by the desire to understand themselves in the dialectics between "me" and "the other/them", relating concepts such as subalternity (Spivak) and necropolitics (Mbembe).
Naír Noronha is trained in sociology, dance and performance. She was born in Maputo during the last years of the Civil War, where she learned to dance between classes and
street games. She studied Sociology in Portugal and Brazil and worked in several provinces in Mozambique. During this period she began to question herself about corporal expression and to understand the importance of the body as a means and a way of communication, and at the same time as an instrument of study.
In her work she confronts her subjectivity and identity with the colonial past. She works on different themes such as: migration, decolonization, silencing of histories, identities and experiences with a special focus on the feminine and family, combining her political vision with a poetic language.
Her main interest is currently focused on the fusion of different artistic expressions such as plastic arts, dance and performance, and crossed by the questions of the crossing of her identity roots (Mozambican, Indian, Portuguese), as well as the places where she lived.
Noronha & Sousa are two Mozambican artists; cousins who share a family history marked by migrations, hybridism, colonialism, and the intertwining of cultures across the Indian Ocean. One coming from cinema and the other from performance, in the visual arts they found a bridge of dialogue between our artistic practices, and how their paths are strongly marked by transits through Europe and Latin America.
They recently collaborated on a project focused on the feminine iconography of the Indian Ocean; exploring together techniques related to cyanotype, and batik, among others.
After that, the desire to explore the universe of collaboration persisted, this time as a duo proposal, where each one chose to explore an affluent of their complex cartography of identity.Therefore “Afluentes” emerges from the idea of the identity search as the cartography of a river & their under-construction identity as a map where they discover new currents of water with different rhythms conforming to the complex identity mosaic that they are made of.
Lara Sousa (b.1991) an anthropologist, filmmaker, story teller, visual artist from Mozambique. Lara’s work engages with narratives coming out of a country still coming to terms with its past and present identity. Issues to do with revolution, trauma, guilt, death, aguish and darkness resonate throughout the stories Lara tells.
Her artistic work is interested in themes such as collective memory/lived memory, cultural heritage, colonisation and decolonization processes and the short films she directed and produced- as founder of Kulunga Filmes, a production company whose main objective is to produce films (documentary and fiction) by emerging filmmakers from Portuguese-speaking African countries and countries in the southern region of Africa- won several awards and were shown at various festivals such as FESPACO, Biennale DAKAR 2022, MAM Rio to name a few.
Noronha & Sousa are two Mozambican artists; cousins who share a family history marked by migrations, hybridism, colonialism, and the intertwining of cultures across the Indian Ocean. One coming from cinema and the other from performance, in the visual arts they found a bridge of dialogue between our artistic practices, and how their paths are strongly marked by transits through Europe and Latin America.
They recently collaborated on a project focused on the feminine iconography of the Indian Ocean; exploring together techniques related to cyanotype, and batik, among others.
After that, the desire to explore the universe of collaboration persisted, this time as a duo proposal, where each one chose to explore an affluent of their complex cartography of identity.Therefore “Afluentes” emerges from the idea of the identity search as the cartography of a river & their under-construction identity as a map where they discover new currents of water with different rhythms conforming to the complex identity mosaic that they are made of.
