Nature Glitches

Africa is known for its bold, unapologetic use of colour. Stories are told in pigments, tones and hues; a kaleidoscope as diverse as the cultures and peoples of the continent. For the initiative Colours of Africa, a collaborative project with Google Arts & Culture, we asked 60 African creatives to capture the unique spirit of their country in a colour which represents home to them.

The projects they have created are personal and distinct stories of Africa, put into images, videos, texts and illustrations. Each artist has also attempted to articulate what being African means to their identity and view of the world.

Colour:Algeria Rouge
Country:Mozambique

Artwork Rationale:

I’ve been away from Mozambique for many years. I’ve been far away from the browns of the earth, browns that mix with the greens of the trees and violet flowers of the acacias. All colours mix with the smells of the ocean, long gone, many landscapes ago. Somewhere in my distant memories.

You ask me what the colours of this [Mozambican] nation are. What are they if not a combination of many tribes and peoples mixed together? The Rongas, the Bitongas, the Makuas…

All colours (though they seem clear) are combinations. They are part of a spectrum that tricks our eyes.

But do the colours glitch or is it our eyes that are deficient in the ways we consume such colours, people, places?

This colour hunt made me exercise the muscles of my memory: how to put together a Maputo colour, a Mozambican colour? My memory shows its holes, it reveals its errors, its glitches, its many colours.

I try to represent a colour that is not on the spectrum we see with our naked eye. It is a colour that absorbs other colours to make itself appear. It is a colour that changes shape and tone if we desire it to. It is not mono, not unique. A colour that is many colours for a nation that is many things.

What does it mean to be African:

What does it mean to be South American or North American or Asian or even European? What are the urgencies of representation and belonging?
What does it mean to unpack these questions?
Would this reveal a particular difference?
Will it be liberating to be different?
How can our contemporary multiple representations find space in these closed conversations?
Can the format suffice? Will we be happy with the response?
Will it make me feel more African? Was I only African in the beginning?
Does where I live make me more African?
Is it what I eat that makes me African?
Can where I pray make me African?
So many questions… Being African for me means many things, questions, people, spaces.

Biography:

Euridice Zaituna Kala is a Mozambican artist based in Paris.
 She trained as a photographer at the Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg. Her work takes the form of installations, performances, images and writing.
She is the founder and co-organiser of e.a.s.t. (Ephemeral Archival Station), a lab and platform for long-term artistic research projects, established in 2017. Kala is also the co-founder of and NonAc a publishing home for non - academic texts focusing on orality and contemporary ways of registering texts and essays.
Kala is the winner of the ADAGP/ Villa Vassilieff fellowship 2019/20, was a finalist of the 10th SAM art Prix (2018) as well as a finalist of the 7th edition of the prize of contemporary talents of the François Schneider Foundation (2018).
The artist has been awarded several residencies on the African continent and internationally, most recently at Urbane Kunst Ruhr, Germany (2019/2020), Maisons Daura, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France (2018), the Centro Cultural Português Maputo, Lisbon (2016) and at Hangar, Lisbon (2016).
Kala’s solo exhibitions include: Je suis l’archive, I, the archive at the Villa Vassilieff (2020), 
Sea(e)scapes (2015-2020) at the gallery Salon H, Paris (2021), and her performances include: Stranger Danger, Wait it’s Just a Prayer Room (2019), at the Center Pompidou, Paris; Mackandal Turns into a Butterfly – a Love Potion (2018), Le Pouvoir du Dedans, La galerie Cac de Noisy-le-Sec; Euridice Kala Shows and Doesn’t Tell (2018), Gallery Saint-Severin, Paris; Infecting the City festival, Cape Town (2017).
Her work will be included at the 5th Casablanca Biennale, Morocco (2021), exhibition at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark co-curated with SCCA / REDCLAY (2021), Ghana.
Other exhibition includes: Stellenbosch Triennial (2020), main exhibition, South Africa, Huber Fichte: Love and Ethnology (2019), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Germany, 4th Triennial Small Sculpture in Fellbach (2019), Germany, Mistake! Mistake! said the rooster...and stepped down from the duck (2017), Lumiar Cité, Lisbon, and Co-habitar, Casa da America Latina (2017), Lisbon, 12th Dak’Art Biennial (2016), Palais de la Justice, Senegal.