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Dó

Mónica de Miranda

2018 00:08:38 AngolaPortugueseColorStereo16:9HD video
Tags:
Architecture, City

Description

Dó is an audio/visual synthesis between a dual screen video installation and a sound installation which was developed in collaboration with the Portuguese-Cape Verdean rapper/music composer Chullage. The video depicts a dancer gazing at the city from the top of the “Book building” in Luanda. This building which resembles a book, is emblematic of iconic modernist architecture from the 1960s. The scenario is interlaced with sound and footage of a string orchestra performing a discontinuous piece in multiple locations such as ruined spaces. The musicians search for the correct chord. “Symphony of the city in a single note” (Dó), was composed in the tradition of the symphonic films of Dziga Vertov (Man with a movie Camera) and Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire). The 9-minute film is an observation of the past and present history of Luanda and the ways in which it is currently transforming. The characters alternate between appearing as integral parts of the whole, or mere observers of history. 

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.