We asked curator Sara Castelo Branco for a closer look to the works of our current Exhibition Dissident Bodies:
Part 1 / Kiluanji Kia Henda: This photograph presents a portrait that reveals the violent processes through which Black bodies have been reduced to objects of display and control.
Objet Trouvé is a series of six portraits taken in an abandoned area behind a hotel in Luanda. In these images, found objects are placed in front of the man’s face, concealing his identity and redirecting attention away from him. Yet these objects do more than obstruct the viewer’s gaze — they also point to a history of violence in which the Black man is repeatedly objectified: through labour, colonialism, and even photography itself. Strange and symbolic, the objects transform everyday materials into powerful images that challenge perceptions of identity, the body, and representation.
In relation to the exhibition’s focus on posthuman embodiment, the work suggests that the body is not autonomous, but constructed through systems such as labour, colonial history, and visual representation.
Kiluanji Kia Henda (*1979, Luanda) engages with themes of history, colonialism, war, and identity in Angola. By combining documentary elements, staging, and humour, he develops new perspectives on postcolonial societies and their futures. Working across photography, installation, and performance, Kia Henda approaches his practice as conceptual art, placing the idea at the centre of the work.
