MOVART presents ‘Confronting the Gaze’, by Alice Marcelino, Astrid González, and Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf, on display until April 20th.
‘Confronting the Gaze’ is an artistic practice that combines photography, interventional photography, and video to challenge hegemonic discourses of race and gender.
Alice Marcelino’s “Pele Negra, Algoritmos Brancos” (2023) explores the impact of white supremacism on black populations’ unconscious, referencing Frantz Fanon’s “Peles Brancas, Máscaras Negras” theory. The series uses binary code representations to highlight racial bias in new cyber technologies, which often exclude black skin.
The photographic series “Cultura Negra” (2016) by Astrid González, referencing Liana Angulo’s “Mujeres Portadoras,” tells the story of Cimarrones, African slaves who fled to Abya Yala territories between Colombia and Panama. They established communities and developed African traditions, blending their experiences in Latin America with their own cultural practices.
Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf’s work uses self-portraiture to express her experience as a woman in the age of digital immediacy and the saturation of images in our everyday lives. She portrays the visceralities of female experience, which are often hidden due to the idealized reality of the canonical vision of woman, adjusted to male desire. The series “Natureza Morta” and “Corpo Real” (2022-2023) create images that fragment the gaze into multiple realities, generating ambiguity between disturbing and pleasurable.
MOVART, established in 2015, promotes experimental exhibitions in Luanda and Lisbon, showcasing contemporary African art. The gallery represents artists from African and Portuguese-speaking diasporas and actively develops regular projects and collaborations with a diverse array of artists.
Source: MOVART