Cassi NamodaIs it sunny or cloudy on the land that you live on?, 2024
Cassi Namoda’s work engages with the layered histories and cultural complexities of post-colonial Africa, with particular focus on the intersections between vernacular traditions and the enduring imprint of Portuguese colonialism across the Lusophone world. Her syncretic paintings draw from a vast symbolic repertoire, merging global mythologies, indigenous visual languages, European art history, and colonial legacies into dreamlike narratives and evocative landscapes. Recurring figures inhabit these intimate scenes, enriched by references to literature, cinema, and architecture. Her use of washed colour, bold composition, and flattened perspective lends the work a distinct sense of magical realism. What emerges is a visual language that imbues modernity and the Western canon with a sense of longing, romance and saudade – an emotional register both tender and unresolved.
