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The Sun Does Not Rise in the North

Mónica de Miranda

2023 00:30:02 Morocco, SpainPortugueseColorStereo16:9HD video
Tags:
Landscape, Post-colonialism

Description

Moving across the shores between Ceuta (Spain) and Tangier, Morocco, a man and woman discover the present borders and past archaeologies of these lands that were once one and now exist separately. Human shipwrecks meet the abyss of such separation. People are trapped in a limbo between Europe and the inhospitable forests of Morocco. In the incessant search for a better life, many die crossing the Mediterranean, a sea that has become a graveyard of unconquered lost hopes. The land is cut by barbed wires that do not let people in or out, constantly expelling and containing. 

A separated couple travels through the desert and forests, wandering until they reach the edge of the borders that divide Africa and Europe. The travels entice the characters to deep reflection on the reality of their lives – on one side an European African woman who wants to return to Africa in the search of her own identity, and on the other an African man moving towards Europe, projecting dreams of a promised land. 

The sun does not rise in the north is a search and a dialogue between Africa and its diaspora about the contemporary complexities of immigration and displacement.

About Mónica de Miranda

Mónica de Miranda is a Portuguese/Angolan visual artist, filmmaker and researcher whose interdisciplinary and research-based practice critically looks at the convergence of politics, gender, memory, space and history. Her work encompasses drawing, installation, photography, film and sound, on the boundaries between documentary and fiction. Mónica investigates strategies of resistance, geographies of affection, storytelling and ecologies of care.

She is the founder and the artistic director of Hangar (2014), an art and research centre in Lisbon. Hangar’s programs provide spaces where artists, curators and researchers, mainly from the global south, can co-create and build social and creative networks to benefit their communities.

Her work has been presented at major international events such as: 1st Malta Biennale; 3th Lagos Biennale; 6th Lubumbashi Biennale; 12th Berlin Biennale; 12th Dakar Biennale; 5th International Biennial of Casablanca; Bamako Encounters – 13th African Biennale of Photography; 14th Venice Architecture Biennale; BIENALSUR 2021; Houston FotoFest 2022; 18th Fotografia Europea, Reggio Emilia. She represented the Portugal Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia 2024.

Solo and group exhibitions have taken place at: Sharjah Biennale, Sharjah, Wexner Art Center, Ohio; Photo Ireland, Dublin; Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro; Bildmuseet, Umeå; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; Gulbenkian, Lisbon; MUCEM, Marseilles; AfricaMuseum, Tervuren; MAAT, Lisbon; MUAC, Mexico City; Barbican, London; Autograph, London; Frac des Pays de la Loire, Nantes; Uppsala Museum, Sweden; MNAC, Lisbon; Camões Cultural Institute, Luanda, among others.

Mónica de Miranda received the Soros Arts Fellowship (2024) and La Caixa Foundation Fellowship (2022). She won the Expanded Photography Prize in Torino (2024), and was nominated for the Louis Roederer Photography Prize for Sustainability (2024), EDP Foundation’ New Artists Award (2019) and Novo Banco Photo Prize (2016).

Mónica de Miranda is also a researcher with the Foundation for Science and Technology (2013-2024) in the Center for Comparative Studies at University of Lisbon where she coordinates the cluster Post-Archive: Politics of Place, Memory and Identity.