(Un)submissive Earth
Art installation by Bruno Moraes Cabral and Kiluanji Kia Henda
Unpublished official reports on Portuguese prisons in Angola and Mozambique reveal inhumane detention conditions. With the advent of the independence struggles, the regime launches large undertakings to create new model establishments, but in them entire families are reclused and forced to work. This video installation also reflects, in a more poetic way, on the idea of freedom and resistance. A timeless fictional narration that creates a counterpoint with the archival footage and its historical dimension. A work by Kiluanji Kia Henda and Bruno Moraes Cabral about the most extreme deprivation of freedom in the colonial era and, at the same time, fiction as the ultimate space of resistance.
The Authors
Bruno Moraes Cabral, born in 1980, is a film producer and director. Especially dedicated to documentary, his work in film and television seeks to pose important questions about history, contemporary society and its mutations.
In 2011 he founded Garden Films, where he produced and directed the award-winning documentary Praxis, the series for RTP História a História and História a História – Africa, and produced Hasta que Muera el Sol by Claudio Carbone. In 2020 he founds Wonder Maria, with João Nuno Pinto, Andreia Nunes and Fernanda Polacow, where he starts developing fiction and documentary projects of international scope, with a special focus on Brazil and Africa.
Kiluanji Kia Henda, born in Angola in 1979, is a self-taught artist who was catapulted into the world of art by growing up in a household of photography enthusiasts. His conceptual acuteness was sharpened during a phase in which he devoted himself to music, avant-garde theater, and collaborations with a collective of emerging artists from Luanda’s art scene.
Kia Henda’s cinematographic works have been shown at the 49th edition of the Rotterdam Film Festival (IFFR), and at the Beijing International Short Film Festival (BISFF), and have participated in film cycles such as:! Close-Up Cinema, Concrete Futures (London, 2017); Tate Liverpool, Another Day of Life, (Liverpool, 2017); Tate Modern, Uniqlo Tate Lates, 2020; Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), CC to the World:, (Berlin, 2020); Centre Georges Pompidou, Chine – Afrique, (Paris, 2020).
The artist has also participated in group exhibitions at numerous institutions, including the Barbican Art Center (London, 2020), Migros Museum (Zurich, 2020), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, 2020), Zeitz MOCAA (Cape Town, 2019), Tate Modern (London, 2019), MAAT (Lisbon, 2018), National Museum of African Art – Smithsonian Institution (Washington D.C., 2015) and Museo Guggenheim (Bilbao, 2015). His work has been exhibited at the Gwangju Biennale (2018), Bergen Assembly (2013), São Paulo Biennale (2010), Venice Biennale (2007) and Luanda Triennial (2007). In 2017, he was awarded the Frieze Artist Award and in 2019 he was selected for the Unlimited Basel project.
He presented his work The Fortress in the courtyard of Somerset House (London), 2019 the artist also won the Angola National Culture and Arts Award in 2012 and in 2014 was selected among 100 Leading Global Thinkers by the prestigious US magazine Foreign Politics.