Presentation
Taking place in Luanda, the Nesr Art Foundation's residency program is open to all Angolan emerging artists and the selection is made by the foundation's artistic committee following an open call for applications.
The residencies' mission is to establish deeper engagement between artists and curators, and to create opportunities for practical and theoretical mentorship. It has a commitment to facilitating connections with the social and cultural scene in Angola, as well as maintaining strong conversations between the residents and international arts professionals.
The Residency program welcomes 6 artists per year, in 3 sessions of 2 to 3 months, with 2 artists at a time. Residents receive a fully furnished studio and living space, as well as a monthly stipend and production grant.
Open Call
Coming soon.
Details
Residents
Sofia Yala Sofia Yala
Residency: May - July,2023
Sofia Yala's artwork conveys a sense of urgency to display archival material combined with episodes of emancipation in life.
Yala is a storyteller, working in different times, textures, and layers. Her work considers (de)construction of her own body and identity in search of futuristic ways of framing.
Her medium of choice is photography, but Sofia enjoys experimenting and showing her work alongside different formats and compositions.
Carina Ubisse Capitine Carina Ubisse Capitine
Residency: May - July, 2023
Mozambican and queer artist Carina Capitine believes in the power of art to give voice to the realities of marginalized communities.
She manifests the sapphic nature of her art in her use of the body, nature, and sensuality to portray her interaction with feminine energy.
Through the combination of traditional ceramics, writing, and audio-visual cut-outs, Carina finds a vehicle for self-reflection and expression and she explores the use of art as a communication tool for social change.
Malebona Maphutse Malebona Maphutse
Residency: January - March, 2023
Malebona Maphutse, guest artist through a partnership with the THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE gallery, lives and works in Johannesburg, and seeks to build historical narratives through her extensive and comprehensive artistic production - which includes linocuts and digigraphy, painting on canvas, drawing, sculptural installations, and video art.
Her digital collages and installations appropriate the visuals and language of street flyers, bitingly exploring the historical debt resulting from systemic oppression. Her work seeks to investigate how bodies encounter space and transcend mere existence to understand the politics of space.
Hélio Buite Hélio Buite
Residency: January - March, 2023
Hélio Buite's practice goes deep into different disciplines, such as photography, video, installation, audio, and documentation.
He is interested in neocolonialism when analyzing the path taken by Angola, from colonialism, independence, civil war, and the economic crisis that the country is going through.
Hélio believes in a future of self-sufficiency and human rights that are practiced, not just written. A reality that seems utopian in the current context.
Adriano Cangombe Adriano Cangombe
Residency: September - November, 2022
Adriano Cangombe's practices focus on resignifying certain aspects, facts, and events that have marked Angolan history in the context of the civil war.
His work is fundamentally based on the construction of collective memory and archive that sustains his narrative, resulting in experimenting different media and materials.
Rui Magalhães Rui Magalhães
Residency: September - November, 2022
Rui Magalhães is a photographer who captures commonplace with detailed intensity and an eye for the expressions, attitudes, and postures that expose mechanisms of visibility and opacity, mobility and permanence, resistance, and survival in a city built on economic eventualities.
Studying us and the occupations of the spaces, his practice is a mix of critical archives of Luanda’s recent architectural history and urban archaeology, documenting the city's inoperable relations.
Benigno Mangovo Benigno Mangovo
Residency: May - June, 2022
Benigno's work is mostly a metaphorical representation of personal experiences and various characteristics that make up the human experience, such as interpersonal relationships, fear, death, loneliness, memory, love, and dreams.
Eltina Gaspar Eltina Gaspar
Residency: May - June, 2022
Eltina Gaspar uses photography as a communication tool, expressing herself through it. Her work is focused on human rights and social protests.
Through images, she is storytelling the social, political, and economic context of her country and the world.
Osvaldo Ferreira Osvaldo Ferreira
Residency: November - December, 2021
Osvaldo Ferreira explores the relationship between generations within Angola's social everyday life.
Pamina Sebastião Pamina Sebastião
Residency: November - December, 2021
Pamina Sebastião is an artist and activist whose practice focuses on gender and sexuality, as well as the (de)construction of the body as part of the decolonization process.
Open Call
Sofia Yala
Residency: May - July,2023: May - July,2023
Sofia Yala's artwork conveys a sense of urgency to display archival material combined with episodes of emancipation in life.
Yala is a storyteller, working in different times, textures, and layers. Her work considers (de)construction of her own body and identity in search of futuristic ways of framing.
Her medium of choice is photography, but Sofia enjoys experimenting and showing her work alongside different formats and compositions.
Carina Ubisse Capitine
Residency: May - July, 2023: May - July, 2023
Mozambican and queer artist Carina Capitine believes in the power of art to give voice to the realities of marginalized communities.
She manifests the sapphic nature of her art in her use of the body, nature, and sensuality to portray her interaction with feminine energy.
Through the combination of traditional ceramics, writing, and audio-visual cut-outs, Carina finds a vehicle for self-reflection and expression and she explores the use of art as a communication tool for social change.
Malebona Maphutse
Residency: January - March, 2023: January - March, 2023
Malebona Maphutse, guest artist through a partnership with the THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE gallery, lives and works in Johannesburg, and seeks to build historical narratives through her extensive and comprehensive artistic production - which includes linocuts and digigraphy, painting on canvas, drawing, sculptural installations, and video art.
Her digital collages and installations appropriate the visuals and language of street flyers, bitingly exploring the historical debt resulting from systemic oppression. Her work seeks to investigate how bodies encounter space and transcend mere existence to understand the politics of space.
Hélio Buite
Residency: January - March, 2023: January - March, 2023
Hélio Buite's practice goes deep into different disciplines, such as photography, video, installation, audio, and documentation.
He is interested in neocolonialism when analyzing the path taken by Angola, from colonialism, independence, civil war, and the economic crisis that the country is going through.
Hélio believes in a future of self-sufficiency and human rights that are practiced, not just written. A reality that seems utopian in the current context.
Adriano Cangombe
Residency: September - November, 2022: September - November, 2022
Adriano Cangombe's practices focus on resignifying certain aspects, facts, and events that have marked Angolan history in the context of the civil war.
His work is fundamentally based on the construction of collective memory and archive that sustains his narrative, resulting in experimenting different media and materials.
Rui Magalhães
Residency: September - November, 2022: September - November, 2022
Rui Magalhães is a photographer who captures commonplace with detailed intensity and an eye for the expressions, attitudes, and postures that expose mechanisms of visibility and opacity, mobility and permanence, resistance, and survival in a city built on economic eventualities.
Studying us and the occupations of the spaces, his practice is a mix of critical archives of Luanda’s recent architectural history and urban archaeology, documenting the city's inoperable relations.
Benigno Mangovo
Residency: May - June, 2022: May - June, 2022
Benigno's work is mostly a metaphorical representation of personal experiences and various characteristics that make up the human experience, such as interpersonal relationships, fear, death, loneliness, memory, love, and dreams.
Eltina Gaspar
Residency: May - June, 2022: May - June, 2022
Eltina Gaspar uses photography as a communication tool, expressing herself through it. Her work is focused on human rights and social protests.
Through images, she is storytelling the social, political, and economic context of her country and the world.
Osvaldo Ferreira
Residency: November - December, 2021: November - December, 2021
Osvaldo Ferreira explores the relationship between generations within Angola's social everyday life.
Pamina Sebastião
Residency: November - December, 2021: November - December, 2021
Pamina Sebastião is an artist and activist whose practice focuses on gender and sexuality, as well as the (de)construction of the body as part of the decolonization process.
Presentation
Constituting a significant and unprecedented group of artworks showcasing the vitality and diversity of Angola, the collection aims at contextualizing these works within wider practices in Africa and its diaspora.
The Foundation facilitates the circulation of works across the world with an active loan program of its collection.
Artists
António Ole António Ole
Residency:
António Ole (b.1951 Angola) is a leading figure in the history of artistic developments in Angola and one of the most active on the international contemporary art scene among Portuguese-speaking African artists. His rich and diversified visual universe is bound in the vivid intersection of direct observation, historical memory, far-reaching references and pressing contemporary issues such as poverty, inequity, migration, corruption and unsustainable development. His immediate cultural and natural surroundings are
continuous sources of inspiration. Throughout his
work, the artist often pays tribute to the simple beauty and spontaneous creativity thriving among the Angolan population, which are noticeable in all aspects of people’s daily lives. His multimedia inventiveness ranges from cinema, video and photography to drawings, collage, painting, sculpture and monumental installation.
Benigno Mangovo Benigno Mangovo
Residency:
Benigno’s work is mostly a metaphorical representation of personal experiences and various characteristics that make up the human experience, such as interpersonal relationships, fear, death, loneliness, memory, love and dreams.
Gio Swaby Gio Swaby
Residency:
"My work revolves around an exploration of identity, more specifically, the intersections of Blackness and womanhood. I am interested in the ways in which this physical identity can serve as a positive force of connection and closeness, while also examining its imposed relationship to otherness."
Helena Uambembe Helena Uambembe
Residency:
Helena Uambembe is an Angolan-South African artist whose work interrogates the dyadic relationship between the political (world politics) and the domestic (personal politics). Drawing from personal and familial history, Uambembe maps the ideological and intimate space created by the historical and colonial links between
Angolan, Southern African and global history.
Born in South Africa in 1994, her Angolan parents fled the Angolan civil war back in 1975 and settled in the embattled Pomfret with other families of the 32 Battalion. This complex family history (itself a disruption of current accepted narratives of postcolonial Africa), the 32 Battalion, Pomfret and her Angolan heritage are dominant themes in her multi-disciplinary approach.
Joana Choumali Joana Choumali
Residency:
Born in 1974, Choumali is a visual artist/photographer based in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. She works mainly on conceptual portraits, mixed media, and documentary photography.
In the series Alba'hian meaning ' the first light of day' in the Agni language of the Akan group in Cote d'Ivoire - the artist meditates on the cityscape during the time and processes of dawn.
Works depicting specific individuals encountered on these morning walks, contemplate the core of the human being, capturing their État d'esprit (state of mind). Through her textile interventions and collage, subjects move larger than life through silent cities; faces blurred by motion or by fabric, their figures and gestures remain legible and become universal.
Jeremy Demester Jeremy Demester
Residency:
Kiluanji Kia Henda Kiluanji Kia Henda
Residency:
Born in 1979 in Luanda (Angola), Kiluanji Kia Henda is a Multidisciplinary artist that uses humor and visual storytelling to examine Angola’s colonial history and propose new possibilities for the future. His work has been presented at the Venice Biennale, Bienal de São Paolo, and Gwangju Biennial, and his photo series Rusty Mirage (The City Skyline) (2013) was acquired by the Tate Modern in 2019.
Working in photography, video, installation, and performance, Kia Henda connects Angola’s struggle for liberation and pursuit of a postcolonial identity to global histories of slavery and colonization.
He employs humor to mediate heavy subjects like oppression, war, and poverty, and he repurposes public spaces charged with historical significance to reshape collective memory.
Mónica de Miranda Mónica de Miranda
Residency:
Born in 1976, Mónica de Miranda is a Portuguese artist, living and working in Lisbon, Portugal. Mónica is an artist and researcher. Born in Porto (Portugal) from Angolan parents, she actually describes herself as an artist working in the diaspora. Her work is based on themes of urban archaeology and personal geographies.
Across her investigations on the Afro-Portuguese world, Mónica de Miranda’s works creates a space for debate on the historical relation between Portugal and its former colonies, informed by the artist’s own experience. De Miranda draws addresses bodies, ideas, and emotions, hinting at the fact that most of those in the path of the empire did not have the power to change history.
Osvaldo Ferreira Osvaldo Ferreira
Residency:
Osvaldo Ferreira (b. 1980, Angola) explores themes associated with the everyday life of Angolan society, evidencing an intergenerational continuity/discontinuity with regard to social experiences. His work, primarily constituted of paintings, often integrates chromatic and material elements that refer to the African textile tradition of exuberant colors.
With this, he aims to emphasize the presence of Africa’s cultural and social heritage – a continent that, through colonization and globalization, witnessed successive processes of appropriation and cultural manipulation, triggering involuntary miscegenation and the imposition of a system that degenerates the continent’s identity.
René Tavares René Tavares
Residency:
René Tavares (b.1983, São Tomé e Príncipe) translates into painting and drawing, through strokes, lines, and spots, a personal
synthesis of his own identity - always "unfinished" and in construction - positioning himself in
constant movement between past and present references.
In works such as "No Boundaries to Love (Cotton People Reloaded)," René Tavares reflects on the African diaspora and on different forms of miscegenation that have taken place. At the same time, he reflects on his creative process as an artist in tune with rhythms of miscegenation that overlap times and places, diluting the borders between domains.
Yinka Shoribare Yinka Shoribare
Residency:
Throughout his colourful multimedia practice, Yinka Shonibare considers issues of postcolonialism and globalism and often references the distinctive batik cloth common in Nigeria.
The African Library is a commemoration of the fight for independence in previous European colonies across the African continent and celebrates the achievements made by Africans since liberation. It consists of an installation of thousands of books covered in the artist’s signature Dutch wax printed cotton textile.
As excerpts of the broader library, The African Library Collections focus on contributors from specific disciplines; namely: Musicians, Actors, Sports People, Activists, Business Leaders, Female Political Leaders, Designers, Teachers and Scholars, Filmmakers and Theatre Practitioners. The collections are constituted of approximately 200 books and are presented on a bookshelf with a bespoke card catalogue box.
Ymane Chabi-Gara Ymane Chabi-Gara
Residency:
Ymane Chabi-Gara is a French painter born in 1986 in Paris. She lives and works in Montreuil.
Isolation, solitude, the body in relation to the world, and to the condition of being social are the main subjects of Ymane Chabi-Gara’s paintings. They represent individuals, alone or in small groups, in universes and situations that mirror their interiority. Domestic spaces and industrial wastelands serve as a support for the narrative, guided by formal and colored impressions. At first, a very detailed drawing determines the structure of the composition. Then the experience of painting for its own sake, opens sensitive and pictorial possibilities.
The body, always at the center of her preoccupations, serves as a point of convergence towards which all experience tends and finds meaning. The body of others but also, recently, her own body. This staging of herself touches both the singularity of the intimate and the solitude as an archaic and universal feeling.
Esther Mahlangu Esther Mahlangu
Residency:
Esther Mahlangu is part of the Ndebele community in the Gauteng region, located north of Pretoria. The Ndebele, unlike many other tribes in South Africa, have managed to preserve
their centuries’ old ancestral traditions.
Despite being a patriarchal society, artistic heritage is handed down from mother to daughter; as a young woman reaches puberty she withdraws from male society for three months and is taught the ceremonial patterns of Ndebele beadwork— in the nineteenth century this tradition was extended to decorative wall paintings, also executed exclusively by the Ndebele women.
Esther Mahlangu is an important proponent of this tradition. She draws freehand, without first
measuring or sketching, using luminous and high-contrast vinyl paints that lend extraordinary vigor to her murals. While at a glance purely abstract, her compositions are built upon a highly inventive system of signs and symbols.
Mahlangu is the first Ndebele artist to transpose wall paintings onto canvases and to take the
conventions of her artwork into the larger arena.
António Ole
António Ole (b.1951 Angola) is a leading figure in the history of artistic developments in Angola and one of the most active on the international contemporary art scene among Portuguese-speaking African artists. His rich and diversified visual universe is bound in the vivid intersection of direct observation, historical memory, far-reaching references and pressing contemporary issues such as poverty, inequity, migration, corruption and unsustainable development. His immediate cultural and natural surroundings are continuous sources of inspiration. Throughout his work, the artist often pays tribute to the simple beauty and spontaneous creativity thriving among the Angolan population, which are noticeable in all aspects of people’s daily lives. His multimedia inventiveness ranges from cinema, video and photography to drawings, collage, painting, sculpture and monumental installation.
Benigno Mangovo
Benigno’s work is mostly a metaphorical representation of personal experiences and various characteristics that make up the human experience, such as interpersonal relationships, fear, death, loneliness, memory, love and dreams.
Gio Swaby
"My work revolves around an exploration of identity, more specifically, the intersections of Blackness and womanhood. I am interested in the ways in which this physical identity can serve as a positive force of connection and closeness, while also examining its imposed relationship to otherness."
Helena Uambembe
Helena Uambembe is an Angolan-South African artist whose work interrogates the dyadic relationship between the political (world politics) and the domestic (personal politics). Drawing from personal and familial history, Uambembe maps the ideological and intimate space created by the historical and colonial links between Angolan, Southern African and global history. Born in South Africa in 1994, her Angolan parents fled the Angolan civil war back in 1975 and settled in the embattled Pomfret with other families of the 32 Battalion. This complex family history (itself a disruption of current accepted narratives of postcolonial Africa), the 32 Battalion, Pomfret and her Angolan heritage are dominant themes in her multi-disciplinary approach.
Joana Choumali
Born in 1974, Choumali is a visual artist/photographer based in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. She works mainly on conceptual portraits, mixed media, and documentary photography. In the series Alba'hian meaning ' the first light of day' in the Agni language of the Akan group in Cote d'Ivoire - the artist meditates on the cityscape during the time and processes of dawn. Works depicting specific individuals encountered on these morning walks, contemplate the core of the human being, capturing their État d'esprit (state of mind). Through her textile interventions and collage, subjects move larger than life through silent cities; faces blurred by motion or by fabric, their figures and gestures remain legible and become universal.
Jeremy Demester
Kiluanji Kia Henda
Born in 1979 in Luanda (Angola), Kiluanji Kia Henda is a Multidisciplinary artist that uses humor and visual storytelling to examine Angola’s colonial history and propose new possibilities for the future. His work has been presented at the Venice Biennale, Bienal de São Paolo, and Gwangju Biennial, and his photo series Rusty Mirage (The City Skyline) (2013) was acquired by the Tate Modern in 2019. Working in photography, video, installation, and performance, Kia Henda connects Angola’s struggle for liberation and pursuit of a postcolonial identity to global histories of slavery and colonization. He employs humor to mediate heavy subjects like oppression, war, and poverty, and he repurposes public spaces charged with historical significance to reshape collective memory.
Mónica de Miranda
Born in 1976, Mónica de Miranda is a Portuguese artist, living and working in Lisbon, Portugal. Mónica is an artist and researcher. Born in Porto (Portugal) from Angolan parents, she actually describes herself as an artist working in the diaspora. Her work is based on themes of urban archaeology and personal geographies. Across her investigations on the Afro-Portuguese world, Mónica de Miranda’s works creates a space for debate on the historical relation between Portugal and its former colonies, informed by the artist’s own experience. De Miranda draws addresses bodies, ideas, and emotions, hinting at the fact that most of those in the path of the empire did not have the power to change history.
Osvaldo Ferreira
Osvaldo Ferreira (b. 1980, Angola) explores themes associated with the everyday life of Angolan society, evidencing an intergenerational continuity/discontinuity with regard to social experiences. His work, primarily constituted of paintings, often integrates chromatic and material elements that refer to the African textile tradition of exuberant colors. With this, he aims to emphasize the presence of Africa’s cultural and social heritage – a continent that, through colonization and globalization, witnessed successive processes of appropriation and cultural manipulation, triggering involuntary miscegenation and the imposition of a system that degenerates the continent’s identity.
René Tavares
René Tavares (b.1983, São Tomé e Príncipe) translates into painting and drawing, through strokes, lines, and spots, a personal synthesis of his own identity - always "unfinished" and in construction - positioning himself in constant movement between past and present references. In works such as "No Boundaries to Love (Cotton People Reloaded)," René Tavares reflects on the African diaspora and on different forms of miscegenation that have taken place. At the same time, he reflects on his creative process as an artist in tune with rhythms of miscegenation that overlap times and places, diluting the borders between domains.
Yinka Shoribare
Throughout his colourful multimedia practice, Yinka Shonibare considers issues of postcolonialism and globalism and often references the distinctive batik cloth common in Nigeria. The African Library is a commemoration of the fight for independence in previous European colonies across the African continent and celebrates the achievements made by Africans since liberation. It consists of an installation of thousands of books covered in the artist’s signature Dutch wax printed cotton textile. As excerpts of the broader library, The African Library Collections focus on contributors from specific disciplines; namely: Musicians, Actors, Sports People, Activists, Business Leaders, Female Political Leaders, Designers, Teachers and Scholars, Filmmakers and Theatre Practitioners. The collections are constituted of approximately 200 books and are presented on a bookshelf with a bespoke card catalogue box.
Ymane Chabi-Gara
Ymane Chabi-Gara is a French painter born in 1986 in Paris. She lives and works in Montreuil. Isolation, solitude, the body in relation to the world, and to the condition of being social are the main subjects of Ymane Chabi-Gara’s paintings. They represent individuals, alone or in small groups, in universes and situations that mirror their interiority. Domestic spaces and industrial wastelands serve as a support for the narrative, guided by formal and colored impressions. At first, a very detailed drawing determines the structure of the composition. Then the experience of painting for its own sake, opens sensitive and pictorial possibilities. The body, always at the center of her preoccupations, serves as a point of convergence towards which all experience tends and finds meaning. The body of others but also, recently, her own body. This staging of herself touches both the singularity of the intimate and the solitude as an archaic and universal feeling.
Esther Mahlangu
Esther Mahlangu is part of the Ndebele community in the Gauteng region, located north of Pretoria. The Ndebele, unlike many other tribes in South Africa, have managed to preserve their centuries’ old ancestral traditions. Despite being a patriarchal society, artistic heritage is handed down from mother to daughter; as a young woman reaches puberty she withdraws from male society for three months and is taught the ceremonial patterns of Ndebele beadwork— in the nineteenth century this tradition was extended to decorative wall paintings, also executed exclusively by the Ndebele women. Esther Mahlangu is an important proponent of this tradition. She draws freehand, without first measuring or sketching, using luminous and high-contrast vinyl paints that lend extraordinary vigor to her murals. While at a glance purely abstract, her compositions are built upon a highly inventive system of signs and symbols. Mahlangu is the first Ndebele artist to transpose wall paintings onto canvases and to take the conventions of her artwork into the larger arena.
The Nesr Art Foundation is an independent art foundation founded in 2021 by Hiba and Wissam Nesr. It focuses on supporting Angolan artists, and artists from the continent, through a platform for dialogue and exchange within Africa and internationally. The foundation provides a space for artistic research, production, and critical discourse through its residencies, collection, and educational projects, centered around a creative hub located in Luanda, Angola.
Founders
Hiba and Wissam Nesr are philanthropists and founders of the Nesr Art Foundation; a foundation born out of their wish to support the dynamic creative community within Angola and promote it internationally. The Nesr family has been based in Africa for the last 40 years and operates the largest agri-industrial group in Angola. For the last ten years, Hiba and Wissam have focused their philanthropic efforts to promote quality education, zero hunger, clean water and sanitation in the country.
Project Manager
Edna Bettencourt
Artistic Committee
Azu Nwagbogu Paula Nascimento Tandazani Dhlakama Thiago de Paula Souza
Advisory Board
Diana Campbell N'Goné Fall Samy Ghiyati Hala Khayat Jozef Smets Suzana Sousa Mercedes Vilardell Nora Mansour