It is a joy to discover how tribal (or any art form) enriches the lives of those looking, and how the nexus between pre-conceptions and the unpredicted, conjugates new dictionaries of thought and often a passion for the genre.
Perhaps one such was “Pancho” Guedes arriving as an immigrant in Mozambique at the age of 7 absorbing the patterns, flavours, smells and heady sense of the place. Guedes assimilated with gusto the dynamics of space and form, choosing architecture as a profession. But he was more than an architect and as an artist, sculptor, renaissance man, and great orator, taught others how to see, famously saying ”’Being eclectic allows me to have 25 ways of beautiful’’.
Although Guedes moved to Johannesburg due to the Mozambican civil war (1977-1993) and then to Portugal, his architectural legacy remains in Maputo, lending vibrancy and character to a city where currently 111 of his buildings stand. Innovative buildings for their time, filtering the light, colour and piquant flavours of Lourenco Marques (Maputo), with modernist clarity. Living well alongside art deco structures, Eiffel’s famous station and the Victorian Polana hotel. About architecture he stated.. ” I claim for architects the rights and liberties that painters and poets have held for so long…”
To his students, he was a visionary. He spoke of buildings as though they were alive. Breathing. Their names evoking a particular presence: Prometheus, smiling lion, (1956-58), Salm house (1963-65), Saipaul bakery.
Now that Maputo is renewing itself, sloughing off the crusts of degradation, contemporary photographers celebrate the architecture of the city in new ways, like Pinto Jorge, whose hauntingly beautiful photographs reinvent the poise, light and space of striking edifices in this city, in fresh ways.
Mario Macilau, an ex-street child photographs the holes in the pockets of gentrification. Illustrating the social schism between upheaval past and the future, papered over and forgotten by officialdom.
A young boy is playing behind a discarded TV frame at the Hulene dump in Maputo.
Mabunda’s remnants of war are assembled into cold architectural steel thrones. Reverent pieces, encouraging the mind to still and tread a lighter path. Re-imagined as common domestic products, they proclaim regeneration.
Some Mozambican artists in the diaspora now live downstream in Durban, analogous also for its art deco buildings, colour and unique influences of a different kind. Ezekiel Mabote’s beautiful sinuous paintings with multi-coloured arabesques conjure up the mimetic shadows of the Maconde shetani sculptures from the 1970s.
While Lizette Chirreme living in Cape Town, creates amorphous two dimensional creatures flowing from the same tradition, but clothed in paint and the shweshwe fabric of her adopted country.
Henk Serfontein a South African, influenced by the light and colour of Mozambique celebrated this country by painting this beautiful image entitled Ponto do Oura.
In London, Jack Bell gallery is one, amongst others recognizing the incredible potential to be winkled out of Mozambique.
For those interested in Maconde sculpture please refer to the previous post.
