Art in a State of Emergency: Figuring Angolan Nationalism, 1953-2007 Público
Collier, Delinda Joy (2010)
Abstract
Abstract
Art in a State of Emergency: Figuring Angolan Nationalism, 1953-2007
By Delinda Collier
This dissertation is a genealogy of a book about the Chokwe wall murals in Angola, Paredes Pintadas da Lunda . Written in 1953 by Portuguese anthropologist José Redinha, the book compiles a set of images taken from Chokwe habitations in the Lunda North province of northeastern Angola. The globally disseminated book compiled three years of Redinha's research on the murals, just one subject of his extensive research among the Chokwe in his long tenure at the diamond company Companhia de Diamantes de Angola [Diamang]. Redinha copied the wall murals in the Chitato district of the Lunda province in watercolor and then signed each of his prints. Within the book, each image accompanies a description and interpretation of the murals' forms and composition. Since its publication in 1953, various artists have used this body of images in new artistic formats and under new political regimes. The dissertation begins with the Lunda Tchokwe project of the first Trienal de Luanda (2006-2007), which scanned every plate from Paredes Pintadas da Lunda. In order to contextualize the triennial's use of Paredes Pintadas da Lunda, I revisit the moment of the book's publication in 1953 by the mammoth diamond interest Diamang. I then discuss the use of Chokwe symbols by post-Independence Angolan artists, particularly Vitor Manuel "Viteix" Teixeira. I situate each of these three iterations within their ideological and material contexts in Angola. Specifically, I argue that an important component of the assertion of biopower in Angola has been the visual reification of the Chokwe murals and their component pictograms. The three projects I discuss all mobilize the Chokwe images for the nation-state, whether Portuguese or Angolan. I ultimately argue that these projects were not mere negotiations over the semantics of the Chokwe images, but more accurately, over their transmition through materialized networks.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction...1
Chapter One
"Lunda Tchokwe" and the Contemporary Angolan State...21
Chapter Two
Scientific Colonialism and Paredes Pintadas da
Lunda...62
Chapter Three
From Sona to Sign: the signature and mimesis in Paredes
Pintadas da Lunda...107
Chapter Four
Viteix and the Chokwe Symbols After Independence...141
Chapter Five
Digital Lunda Tchokwe: biopower and protocol...196
Bibliography...226
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