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In(sul)ar

Mónica de Miranda

2019 00:09:10 PortugalColorStereo16:9HD video

Description

In(sul)ar marks the dichotomy between reality and fiction, by creating meta-images of an imagined island, where time and space are confused with each other. In(sul)ar reflects the relation between space, memory and history, as well as the mapping of the body and its relation with architecture, and identity. A women walks through spaces of ruin and old erased memories in spaces located in Azores, an Island in the Atlantic which is at the crossroads in between Europe and Africa. 

In(sul)ar accentuates the duality between the ruin of the tourist and colonial project, represented here by the disruptive presence of the Hotel Monte Palace, which contrasts with the romantic idea of a tropical landscape. In(sul)ar also refers us to an immaterial, imaginary universe that alludes to another geography (metaphysics), situated between what flows and what is solid, between construction and deconstruction, ruin and memory of the place - here, out of place. A universe between the erudite chant (in chorus) that appeals to the reminiscences of a colonial past, and the deconstruction of the current sense of belonging, which is fueled by the complexity of current migratory flows. It seeks an identity that lives from ambulation and is built through the ruins of the past and the sounds that emerge from the gloom. Something that arises from the interior of the earth and expands to the interior of the body, questioning the place of the individual in the narrative of belonging and place. The project proposes a trip through a body that is not always visible, but that is seen in an imaginary island, understood like an archetype of the volcanic island. Read as a metaphor for a journey into the individual, this island operates as a deconstruction of identity, as a fixed and irreversible origin, underlining the dichotomy between nature and culture, life and death. 

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.