Perve Galeria is proud to participate in the 2025 edition of Frieze Masters in London, at Stand S13, presenting a Spotlight solo project devoted to Mozambican artist Teresa Roza d’Oliveira (1945–2019), curated by Carlos Cabral Nunes. A pioneering African feminist and LGBTQ+ artist whose practice remains largely under-recognized, Teresa is the first woman from a Portuguese-speaking African country to appear in this prestigious Spotlight section, an invitation extended by its curator, Valerie Cassel Oliver. Born on the Island of Mozambique to Portuguese parents, she developed a visual language marked by symbolic intensity, expressive figuration, and profound emotional depth, establishing herself as a singular voice within African modernism and Lusophone art.
The presentation features paintings and drawings created between the early 1960s and late 1970s, many publicly exhibited for the first time. While her early career unfolded alongside Mozambique’s independence movement and artists such as Malangatana Ngwenya, Teresa’s work remained deeply personal, blending poetic reflections on the female experience with a steadfast commitment to feminist and LGBTQ+ causes.
Teresa’s life and practice resist easy categorization. A white woman born in Africa, she challenged expectations of what a Mozambican artist should represent after independence. Her marginalization stemmed not only from her colonial lineage but also from her bold personal choices: in the 1970s, she publicly embraced a same-sex relationship: a daring act in a context of limited LGBTQ+ visibility.
With this project, Perve Galeria continues its mission of spotlighting overlooked voices from the Global South, following presentations of Ernesto Shikhani (2018), Teresa Balté (2020), and Cruzeiro Seixas (2021). Teresa Roza d’Oliveira’s singular vision, at once historically significant, politically charged, and poetically intimate, resonates powerfully with contemporary concerns around visibility, resistance, and the redefinition of modernism.
Source: Perve Galeria
