Curators João Pinharanda and Camila Maissune discuss the vision behind the innovative exhibition Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology’s
Installation images, ‘Black Ancient Futures’, at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon. Photographer: Pedro Pina.
‘Black Ancient Futures’, which opened on the 18th of September, 2024, at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) in Lisbon, Portugal, is an ambitious exhibition reimagining Black artistic experiences across past, present, and future. Curated by João Pinharanda and Camila Maissune, this exhibition features a diverse group of African and African diasporic artists whose works challenge traditional narratives and geographical hierarchies. The exhibition invites viewers to explore utopian visions of abundance, well-being, and renewal, offering a space to reflect on racial and historical justice within a transcontinental context. In this interview, Pinharanda and Maissune discuss the curatorial vision behind ‘Black Ancient Futures’ and the significance of the site-specific installations that invite audience interaction, offering fresh perspectives on African art in a European setting.
ART AFRICA: How does the exhibition focus on reimagining past, present, and future Black artistic experiences while challenging traditional narratives around African art and the diaspora?
João Pinharanda and Camila Maissune: The discourse of the selected artists and their chosen works offers us the opportunity to approach the Black artistic experiences from a point of view that we consider innovative, thus challenging the traditional narratives around African art and the diaspora.
The works of the selected artists do not mask the cruel problem of colonial oppression and pillage, exploitation, and violation (of beings, cultures, and resources), nor do they hide the persistent difficulties of affirming black identities today. But these works don’t stop at the realities of historical time: they propose future spaces and times, realities of rupture and renewal.
Installation images, ‘Black Ancient Futures’, at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon. Photographer: Pedro Pina.
In what ways do the works in ‘Black Ancient Futures’ engage with the themes of utopian abundance and well-being, and how do these themes push against geographical and cultural hierarchies?
We envisioned an exhibition free from the weight of a Past only thought of in terms of its negativity and a Present thought of mainly as a Project of replacement. Instead, we imagined an exhibition that would bear witness to a Future of abundance and well-being, of purification and healing, a Future anchored in a utopian pre-colonial past rich in knowledge and mythologies, freed from the geographical and political constraints that have conditioned the continent and freed from the hierarchies (cultural, aesthetic and commercial) imposed by Western modernism on African and diasporic artistic realities.
Could you elaborate on the significance of the site-specific installations, such as Lungiswa Gqunta’s Sleep in Witness, and how they invite interaction and participation from the audience?
The installations, notably the site-specific ones we are presenting, such as Jota Mombaça’s and Lungiswa Gqunta’s, increase the power of communication with audiences. In the case of Lungiswa Gqunta’s Sleep in Witness, whose work always incorporates real and dreamlike memories, the artist works with materials such as razor wire, clay, rock and glass, repeating everyday gestures in her performances. This piece incorporates into its process the footprints of black women, barefoot, on a damp clay floor, walking, running or dancing. This moment of (non-public) production is perceived by visitors as a memory they can enrich by stepping on the same clay again during the exhibition as it dries and cracks open. The presence of the barbed wire serves as a reminder that this walking, running, or dancing took place under racial and social oppression and was an act of resistance against it.
Installation images, ‘Black Ancient Futures’, at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon. Photographer: Pedro Pina.
How do you envision the works presented in the exhibition influencing perspectives on racial and historical justice, particularly in a European context like Lisbon?
This is MAAT’s second exhibition dedicated to African diasporic cultural expression. The first, ‘Interferências’ (2021), focused on the identity and creativity of Black communities and artists from Lisbon city and its outskirts. It marked the first time these perspectives on the identity and creativity of Black communities were integrated into a museum context in Portugal.
However, this exhibition (‘Black Ancient Futures’) develops on a different scale and will be both fundamental and inaugural in both Lisbon and Portuguese contexts. On the one hand, we have the international prominence of all the artists involved (only 4 of them have shown their work in collective exhibitions in Lisbon or Porto). Conversely, it is the most extensive presentation of a new generation of African and diasporic artists in Portugal – set in a cultural context where discussions on decoloniality are often delayed or obscured by the dominant “good” Portuguese colonising narratives.
MAAT is situated in a profoundly symbolic urban landscape: in the very city where the colonial riches and enslaved people once arrived and near the beaches where navigators set sail for Africa, America, and Asia. Here, colonial riches enabled the construction of some of the most important buildings of the Portuguese 16th century. In 1960, a year before the War of Liberation of the Portuguese colonies, the Salazar dictatorship erected a gigantic Monument to the navigators. The square that links these various monuments and buildings still bears the name “Praça do Império” (Imperial Square)!
Installation images, ‘Black Ancient Futures’, at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon. Photographer: Pedro Pina.
What role do mysticism, mythology, and science fiction play in shaping the alternative narratives explored by the artists, and how do they reflect broader cultural and economic dynamics in the post-industrial world?
The symbolic use of hair in the two works presented – We’re Magic. We’re Real #2, 2021, and We’re magic. We’re Real #3 (Channeling Re-existence into Hallowed Grounds of Healing), 2021 – by Jeannette Ehlers reflects a reality that is also evident in Portugal at an individual and community level as a place of identity affirmation. Both pieces are performative or evoke an essential bodily and cultural performativity: dance and music spaces. In the case of We’re Magic. We’re Real #2, 2021, a massive ball of hair replaces a ball of mirrors in a nightclub, rotating in an environment where the gold, guaranteed by shelter blankets, stabilises the temperature of homeless, displaced people or castaways. In the case of We’re magic. We’re Real #3 (Channeling Re-existence into Hallowed Grounds of Healing), 2021, 3 pairs of 24-meter braids fall from the MAAT Central building as if they were part of it. The deliberate excess and presence of this human material, the possibility of being manipulated by the public, and the fact that there are activations of the piece (one of them with the participation of the artist) – certainly bring the public closer to the problem of identity, kinship and healing within the Black diaspora.
Installation images, ‘Black Ancient Futures’, at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon. Photographer: Pedro Pina.
Through the symbolic use of hair, Jeannette Ehlers’ opening performance draws on Afro-Caribbean histories. How do you see this performance contributing to the exhibition’s exploration of identity, kinship, and healing within the Black diaspora?
Successive works presented in this exhibition evoke mysticism, mythology, science fiction, and the technological advances of a post-industrial world. This reality exposes the roots of abundance, well-being, and care that we wish to embody as the central message of this exhibition. It also expresses a field of awareness and critical intervention in the face of the aesthetic, commercial, and museological mechanisms of a system of consecration that remains dominated by capitalist principles, fluctuations of market interests, and Eurocentric collecting tastes.
The exhibition is on view until the 17th of March, 2025. For more information, please visit Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT).
