As we emerge from the confinement of lockdown and assess the benefits of our general syncopation, the artist Mónica de Miranda explores a multi-media exhibition, Mirages and Deep Time through her characters, embodied personages from photographs, moving images and embroidered printed matter as a form of intervention that brings her messaging on the materialising new world order that manifests from the dissolution of the past histories into new histories as identities and obfuscated narratives ostensibly crop-up from her visual cues and metaphors.
For the seeker: there are a few less well known concepts that relate to questing towards the unknowing and the intangible than the thirsty traveler lost in a desert who sees water reflected in the sand and chases the fountain but it is not there. In the natural sciences, Wiener Heisenborg’s Uncertainty Principle establishes the delimitations of subatomic particles with regards to position and momentum. And in contemporary culture understanding the scope and meaning of decolonisation in an increasingly globalised world are all intangibles that are impossible to grasp.
By upending well known visual cues and cliches, Mónica de Miranda’s Mirages and Deep Time circumscribes the problems with decolonial tropes. It is not a hopeless task, it is a continuous and unmitigated quest, one that requires hyper-vigilance and an understanding the limits of learned history. Mirages and Deep Time gives scope to the spiritual and metaphysical aspects about rethinking Black history and identity in Portuguese history. It also advances the conversation towards nature and new forms of knowledge generation in addressing contemporary world’s biggest challenge in climate change in the age of anthropocene.
– Azu Nwagbogu, curator
Solo show curated by Azu Nwagbogu
Galeria Avenida da Índia
Lisboa