Murals, Malangatana Ngwenya (1967, 1987) (EMPIRE LINES x Tate Modern and The Africa Centre Interview)

We're celebrating fifty episodes of EMPIRE LINES, with three specials recorded offline and in the museum space – this time in the Tate Modern, in London, for their latest exhibition Surrealism Beyond Borders. Returning to EMPIRE LINES, Richard Gray joins curator Carine Harmand to explore the works of Mozambican artist, Malangatana Ngwenya. Plus, curator Keith Shiri unveils Malangatana's restored mural at the all-new Africa Centre in London.

White gnashing teeth, wide eyes, and clawed hands of humans and animals dominate Malangatana’s Untitled (1967). Otherwise titled How Long Will This Go On?, the overwhelming oil work is a horrifying visualisation of the violence endured by his native Mozambique, as it struggled for independence from Portugal's Estado Novo until 1975.

A prominent political figure, Malangatana joined the Mozambique liberation movement FRELIMO in 1964, and was imprisoned by the Portuguese secret police. Neither a propagandist nor a 'pamphleteer', his works nevertheless embody his own politics and biography, from his artist's block after prison, to his efforts to memorialise the 'Mozambican personality'. Practicing in both colonial and post-colonial Mozambique, he straddled empire lines across Africa, contesting the notion of Europeanisation as civilisation.

Set against the exhibition and sounds of Mozambique musicians, curator Carine Harmand and Richard Gray reveal the two way flows between European modernism and Africanist art, and how the artist appropriated and benefitted from surrealism's international network. Plus, film curator Keith Shiri shares his experiences with the artist at the recent reopening of the Africa Centre.

Surrealism Beyond Borders runs at the Tate Modern in London until 29 August 2022.

The Africa Centre in London reopened on 9 June 2022.

Part of EMPIRE LINES at 50, featuring three exhibitions ahead of their final weekend. See the episode notes for links to the last tickets, and the other episodes on Althea McNish and Ingrid Pollard.

PRESENTERS: Carine Harmand, Assistant Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, and of Surrealism Beyond Borders. Richard Gray, postgraduate research student at SOAS University of London. He was the co-curator of Our Sophisticated Weapon: Posters of the Mozambican Revolution at the Brunei Gallery, and formerly a 'cooperante internacionalista' (internationalist co-worker), contracted as a teacher by the Mozambican government in the late 1970s. Keith Shiri, film curator, founder, and director of Africa at the Pictures, the London African Film Festival, and the Africa Media Centre at the University of Westminster. He is the curator of the Icons of the Africa Centre Series at The Africa Centre, and is a BFI London Film Festival Programme Advisor.

ART: Untitled, Malangatana Ngwenya (1967).

IMAGE: 'Untitled'.

SOUNDS: Adlina Tatana // Alda Ngwenya, Vasco Sambo.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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