Faisal Abdu’Allah opens the 2024 exhibition cycle at Hangar, with a solo show entitled “Cardinal Virtue”, on display from 20 January to 24 February. In this conversation, he discusses the impact of his upbringing on his artistic path, and the series shown in the exhibition “Cardinal Virtue” – Last Supper (2012) and Prince Hall (2022).

Dr Faisal Abdu’Allah is a Jamaican-British barber and artist best known for his large-scale works that explore the intersectionalities of identity. Abdu’Allah has been exhibited on five continents and has participated in the Torino Biennale, the 55th Venice Biennale, and Aqua Art Miami. Abdu’Allah has collaborated with Sir David Adjaye, Virgil Abloh, choreographer Frank Gatson Jr. and singer Brandy. Abdu’Allah is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including The Joan Mitchell, Mayor of London Award, NEA, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. His works are in the collections of Tate Britain, the V&A Museum, MMoCA (Madison Museum of Contemporary Art) and the Chazen Museum. Abdu’Allah is the Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art and Associate Dean for the Arts at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Abdu’Allah stars in the current Netflix documentary The Fade and is represented by Magnolia Editions and Autograph.

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Edson Chagas is an Angolan photographer. Trained as a photojournalist, his works explore cities, consumerism and the affective and relational nature of objects.

In 2013 Edson represented Angola at the 55th Venice Biennale, the Angolan Pavilion winning the Golden Lion for Best National Participation and subsequently was one of three artists shortlisted for the 11th Novo Banco Photo Award, with an exhibition at Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon. In October 2022 Edson presented Factory of Disposable Feelings at Hangar – a series of works taken at the Fábrica Irmãos Carneiro in Luanda, Angola. He talks with Hangar radio about the project and his process.

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Gabriela Salgado is an Argentine-born curator of contemporary art based in London. Hailing from the Royal College of Art, she was formerly the artistic director of Te Tuhi contemporary art space in New Zealand, curator of public programmes at Tate Modern and the founder of Transatlantic Connections – a programme of creative exchanges for African and Latin American artists. In November, 2022, Gabriela curated an exhibition at Hangar entitled CURAR or TO HEAL. In this conversation, she discusses artists’ diverse knowledge systems, the development of decoloniality in curatorial practices globally and her own trajectory as a subaltern curator ‘complicating’ exhibitions.

Gabriela Salgado is an Argentine-born curator based in London and working internationally. ⁣

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Gabriela has a Curating Contemporary Art Master’s degree from the Royal College of Art, and since 1997 she has curated a large number of exhibitions and has lectured in over twenty countries. She specialized in Latin American art as curator of the Latin American Art Collection at Essex University, UECLAA (1999-2005) and was curator of Public Programmes at Tate Modern (2006-2011). She curated La Otra Bienal in Bogotá, Colombia (2013) and the 2nd Biennale of Thessaloniki, Greece (2009) and acted as jury member for the Prince Claus Awards and Videobrasil Festival. She created ‘Transatlantic Connections’ a programme of exchanges for African and Latin American artists (2011-2016). Between 2017 and 2020 she worked as Artistic Director of Te Tuhi Contemporary Art in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and in 2022 became director of The Showroom in London. ⁣

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Pedro Barateiro is a Lisbon-based artist from Portugal who works across sculpture, film, performance, writing and drawing. Focusing on the deconstruction of Western binary narratives, his works draw from the notion of the artist as spectator, traversing various elements, practices and arrangements in an attempt to build networks of meaning from hybridised objects. In June 2022 Pedro presented the exhibition Vento at Hangar, focussing on a particular moment of Portuguese history on the 25th of April, 1974, as captured by Mario Varela Gomes. In this conversation, he speaks with Hangar Radio about the forgotten histories of freedom, the shift from analog to algorithmic fascism, how the growth of data and media-based trade and identity-formation is influencing what is possible in our realities and what relationship this has to our past struggles for freedom.

Pedro Barateiro (Almada, 1979) works in a variety of media, including sculpture, film, performance, writing and drawing.

His work has focused on the deconstruction of western binary narratives. Barateiro organizes events and exhibitions at Spirit Shop, a space managed by him and attached to his studio in Rua da Madalena in Lisbon. In 2020, along with a group of artists, he started the AAVP (Visual Artists Association in Portugal). He held solo exhibitions at CRAC Alsace (2022), Kohta (2022), Rialto6 (2021), REDCAT (2016), Museu Coleção Berardo (2015), Kunsthalle Basel (2010), Kunsthalle Lissabon (2010), Lumiar Cité (2010), Museu de Serralves (2009), among many others. He has participated in group exhibitions such as the 13th Sharjah Biennial (2017), 20th SESC – Videobrasil (2017), 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), 16th Sydney Biennial (2008) and 5th Berlin Biennial (2008). Barateiro edited the books Temporary Collaborations and ACTIVITY (JRP|Ringier) with artist Ricardo Valentim. He edited the monograph How to Make a Mask, (Kunsthalle Lissabon/ Sternberg Press), The Artist as Spectator and É só uma ferida (It’s only a wound) (Documenta/ Mousse Publishing).

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A blue note is a musical notation used for expressive purposes, initially in jazz and blues but later adopted by popular music at large, created to account for the non-standard pitches sung or played by musicians. In this talk, Simon Njami asks – what is that blue note that we can bring into contemporaneity? Simon discusses his conception of education as a form of awareness and criticality, and the importance of alternatives to the classical education system for young people. He also ponders the role of art and curatorial practice as modes of sharing and creative expression in a local yet global context, among others.

Simon Njami is a Paris-based independent curator, lecturer, writer and art critic. Njami was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of “Revue Noire“ a journal of contemporary African and extra-occidental art. He has served as artistic director of the Bamako photography biennale for ten years. He co-curated the first African pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and curated the first African Art Fair, held in Johannesburg in 2008. He has served for ten years (2000/2010) as cultural advisor for the AFAA the cultural branch of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (today Institut Français) in their cultural cooperation policy. He was member of numerous art and photography juries (10 years at Worldpress). Njami has curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art and photography, including Africa Remix (2004-2007) and The Divine Comedy (Frankfurt, Savanna, Washington DC, 2014/15) African Metropolis (MAXXI, Rome, 2018) and two Editions of the Dak’Art Biennale (2016/2018). He was member of the scientific boards of numerous museums and a Visiting Professor at UCSD (University of San Diego California). He has directed the Pan African master classes in photography (2008/2019), project that he conceived with the Goethe Institut and he is the advisor of AtWork educational format that he co-created with Moleskine Foundation in 2012 and continues to conduct it until the present moment. He is also currently setting up the permanent collection of contemporary art for the Memorial Acte museum in Guadeloupe. Njami has published seven books, including essays and novels.

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Kiluanji Kia Henda is a conceptual artist working across multiple disciplines, including photography, videography, performance and installation. Born in Luanda Angola, four years after the country won its independence from Portuguese rule, his work raises questions and possibilities of reinventing identity and politics, both for Angola and in relation to contemporary sites of migration, refuge and decolonization around the world. In March 2022, Kiluanji presented Now That We Found Freedom, What Are We Going To Do With It? An exhibition co-curated by Anna Sophie Salazar, resulting from a residency collaboration with artists from Angola. In this conversation, Kiluanji discusses the intention of the exhibition, the distinction between art and activism, humour as a language of resilience, the importance of correcting historical narratives and the need to acknowledge the ongoing strategies of colonisation.

Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola, 1979) lives and works in Luanda. In his practice, he uses art as a means of transmitting and constructing history, exploring photography, video, performance, installations, object-sculpture, music and avant-garde theatre as ways of materialising fictional narratives and shifting facts to different temporalities and struggles. Using humour and irony, the artist represents the complexity of themes such as identity, politics, and perceptions of post-independence and modernity in Africa. Working in perverted complicity with historical legacy, he sees the process of appropriation and manipulation of public spaces and structures as different constructions of the collective memory.

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Conversation between Margarida Mendes and Nithya Iyer.

Margarida Mendes is a Lisbon-based curator and researcher exploring the overlap between cybernetics, ecology and experimental film. Her personal research investigates the dynamic transformations of the environment and its impact on societal structures and cultural production. Through her collaborative practice, programming, and activism, Margarida enacts alternative modes of education and political resilience. In this talk, Margarida discusses the idea of ‘curatorial rhizomes’ as spaces in which different elements are interwoven and disseminated to a plurality of audiences across transdisciplinary and multisensory mediums. Other subjects discussed include: the importance of care in facilitating collective spaces of affect, how ritual has come to play a role in her approach towards imagining collective modalities, and the significance of feminist approaches to ecological inquiry.

Margarida Mendes is a researcher, curator and ecologist, exploring the overlap between systems thinking experimental film, sound practices and ecopedagogy. She creates transdisciplinary forums, exhibitions and experiential works where alternative modes of education and sensing practices may catalyse political imagination and restorative action. Mendes has been long involved in anti-extraction activism and ecopedagogy, collaborating with marine NGOs, Universities and institutions of the art world.

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A conversation between Dzifa Peters and Ângela Ferreira about her artistic practice, discussing projects such as Maison Tropicale (2007), Dalaba: Sol d’Exil (2019), and her solo exhibition A Spontaneous Tour of Some Monuments of African Architecture (2021) at HANGAR – Centro de Investigação Artística, curated by Bruno Leitão.

Ângela Ferreira, born in 1958 in Maputo, Mozambique, grew up in South Africa and obtained her MFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She lives and works in Lisbon, teaching Fine Art at Lisbon University, where she obtained her doctorate in 2016. Ferreira’s work is concerned with the ongoing impact of colonialism and post-colonialism on contemporary society, an investigation that is conducted through in-depth research and distillation of ideias into concise and resonant forms. She represented Portugal at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, continuing her investigations into the ways in which European modernism to adapted or failed to adapt to the realities of the African continent by tracing the history of Jean Prouvé’s’ Maison Tropicale’. Architecture also serves as a starting point for the deepening of her long research on the erasure of colonial memory and the refusal of reparation, which finds its most complex materialization in A Tendency to Forget (2015) focusing on ethnographic work of the couple Jorge and Margot Dias. The Pan African Unity Mural (2018), exhibited at the Maat Museum Lisbon and Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden was conceived, retrospectively and introspectively, for the “here” and the “now”. In addition to its own trajectory, other biographical stories are simultaneously narrated, exposed and hidden in this work. In Dalaba: Sol d’Exil (2019) a work focused on Miriam Makeba, one of the most prominent figures in the struggle against apartheid, Ferreira created sculptural pieces based on the architectural elements of the exile building where Makeba lived in Conakri, almost like a prototype of the relationship between modernist and African vernacular architectures. Her sculptural, sound and videographic homages have continuously referenced economic, political and cultural history of the African continent whilst recuperating the work and image of unexpected figures like Peter Blum, Carlos Cardoso, Ingrid Jonker, Jimi Hendrix, Jorge Ben Jor, Jorge dos Santos, Diego Rivera, Miriam Makeba, Angela Davis or Forough Farrokhzad.

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