Ângela Ferreira

Ângela Ferreira’s path has developed around social, political and ethical issues raised by the post-colonial context. Born in Mozambique and raised academically in South Africa, the artist questions the historical fictions about the past and the identity of the colonial West in her work, through narratives and fragments of the social and political history that she combines with her own autobiography,

For the biennial, Ângela Ferreira has conceived an artwork which sets out from the appropriation of the column from Luxor placed at Place de la Concorde, in Paris. Central to the memory of dispossession as part of conquest and colonization, the history of the removal of the column from the Temple of Luxor, in Egypt, and its transport to France, as well as its placement on the pedestal where it is currently found, is a powerful metaphor about the enormous effort involved in the symbolic character of colonial appropriation. In the photos of the pedestal of the obelisk in Place de la Concorde, the design of the complex and inventive machine that allowed for the removal and transport of the sculpture (originally designed by Armand Florimond Mimerel in 1836) can be seen, also represented by the huge maquette that the artist conceived. The intense allusion to of the investment of the symbolic appropriation of the colonized finds important expression in this work.