Kiluanji Kia HendaRedefining the Power IV (Series 75 with Miguel Prince), 2011
Kiluanji Kia Henda lives and works between Luanda and Lisbon. Practicing in the fields of photography, video, and performance, the arist employs a surprising sense of humour to unpack perceptions of postcolonialism and modernism in Africa. His conceptual edge has been sharpened by immersing himself in music, avant-garde theatre, and collaborating with a collective of emerging artists in Luanda’s art scene.
In ‘Redefining the Power’, Kia Henda creates a series of photographs of people striking poses on the empty plinths of Luanda where colonial statues once stood. Taking the form of statues of colonial and historical figures placed in a transit-zone in Luanda, the artist questions just how Africa wishes to position itself historically; possibly inventing a history.
As the series demonstrates, Kia Henda’s work predominantly operates in the liminal space between fiction and reality. Neither a classical nor documentary photographer, Kia Henda appropriates and subverts the context of existing forms in order to create a fiction whose reality can never be entirely divorced from the real world.
