Hit The Ground Thinking
Cristiano Mangovo Bras
WWW.FIRSTFLOORGALLERYHARARE.COM
Cristiano Mangovo Bras
Born 1982, Cabinda, Angola
Lives and works in Luanda, Angola
Cristiano Mangovo, has earned his Degree in Fine Art from Ecole des
Beaux Arts in Kinshasa, DRC with additional training in urban
scenography and performance.
His practice spans painting, sculpture and performance, working
towards cogent social commentary with a strong psychological and
psychoanalytical element. In many ways, his works are like dreams
we see, that are both rooted in and are reflections of our reality, but
which present us with symbols to be interpreted if we are to become
better people and better societies.
Mangovo, has received early recognition for his work, earning a solo
exhibition in 2013 at the Foundation Art and Culture in
Luanda, which ended up touring to Art BAI that year. In 2014, he was
awarded the Mirella Antognoli Prize by the Italian Embassy and
Alliance Française as well as the prestigious ENSA ARTE prize, which
sent him to Cite Internationale des Arts residency. He has exhibited
internationally in solo and group exhibitions in
Portugal, France, Italy, South Africa, D. R. Congo and the United
States and was featured in the Angola Pavilion 2015 Seeds of Memory
at Expo Milan, which won the Best Pavilion Prize as well as taking part
in Infecting the City Festival in Cape Town in 2016.
HIT THE GROUND THINKING!
We live in a time of a 24 hour news cycles, social media, click bait saturation,
which demands immediate gratification, immediate response. Immediate,
in this context becomes a synonym for knee-jerk, a reaction, which is neither
thought through, researched, considered or coherent. Because
consideration takes time, reflection demands pause, coherency, demands
intellectual labour. None of us seem to have time for this and yet we live at a
time, which more than ever demands action based on insight, wisdom and
erudition of all of us because none of us can safely vest our fates in the hands
of someone else. These are the ideas at the heart of Hit the ground thinking!
An inversion of the expression hit the ground running, which expects speed
of action, Hit the ground thinking! casts spotlight on absurd indecisiveness
and poverty of thought, which have infected the powers that be and casting
countless lives into chaos.
Mangovo’s deformed heads and figures riff on surrealism of Magritte and
the jarring drama of Francis Bacon, but most powerfully, these compositions
are informed by his own life in a turbulent environment of Angola, a country
forging a unified identify after years of civil conflict, while recovering from
the trauma of war; a society coping with sudden wealth from oil discoveries,
society still forming its own post and de-colonial identity, a society where
extremes are both brilliant and stark at the same time.
It is the gift of such extremes, which makes for the forceful imagery in Hit
the ground thinking!. There is restless energy underpinned by the pressure to
modernize, the pressure to succeed on other peoples’ terms an energy which
resolves as callous individualism at the hear of which is loneliness. Mangovo’s
portraits are of people, we cannot recognize but we know so well. Those who
have gained too much too fast and yet have lost even more. These are the
proverbial people, who wanted to go fast alone, forgetting that to go far we
need to go together. Hit the ground thinking! harks back to the tradition of
cryptic African proverbs. The ones in this exhibition deliver a stern rejoinder
to take pause, to reflect on life, caution us against selfishness, rashness with
perhaps a hint that when you are backed into a corner, the best way to go
forward is to look back.
Valerie Kabov
Curator
Face of Janus/Palavras Flacidas, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
106cm x 123cm
Three-dimensional dialogue/ Diálogo tridimensional, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
109cm x 106cm
Self-sufficiency/Auto-sustentabilidade, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
124cm x 110cm
Woman with the empty spoon/ Mulher com culhere vazia,
2017
Acrylic on canvas
55cm x 55cm
The citizen’s lament/Lamentasa do cidadão, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
60cm x 46cm
Head in the clouds/Levado, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
50cm x 55cm
Meditation/ Meditação, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
54cm x 48cm
Hello Harare, Part 1, 2017
Collage and paint on paper
94cm x 64cm
Hello Harare, Part 2, 2017
Collage and paint on paper
94cm x 64cm
Hello Harare, Part 3, 2017
Collage and paint on paper
94cm x 64cm
Title: 100 Protection
Perfomance
This performance sees Cristiano emerge draped in cloth
like a traditional spirit medium only proceed to sit on a chair
and begin slapping white paint on his face in silence and
then proceed in silence to attach clothing pegs to his face.
Silent despair, which screams the futility of contorting
yourself to the ways of those, who have neither the
interest nor the will to accept or treat Africans as equals.
And while they no longer have the courage to do it
brazenly it is achieved by many small and seemingly
unimportant acts of disrespect and bigotry.”
First Floor Gallery Harare
31 Lyric Heights, 149 Samora Machel Avenue
Harare
Zimbabwe
[email protected]
www.firstfloorgalleryharare.com
©First Floor Gallery Harare 2017
First Solo is an innovative practice based programme conceived by First Floor
Gallery Harare for emerging artists beyond Harare, aimed at accelerating
professional growth.
In partnership with:
Cristiano Mangovo First Solo Project is supported by an ANT Funding Grant from Pro
Helvetia Johannesburg financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
(SDC).