Gonçalo Mabunda was born on January 1, 1975 in Maputo, Mozambique. He is an artist and anti-war activist. Mabunda has exhibited important museums such as the Center Pompidou in Paris, the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, Gangwon International Biennale, South Korea, the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, the Hayward Gallery in London, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the Tropen Museum, Amsterdam, Norway Army Museum, Netherlands Army Museum, Sweden Army Museum and many more.
Mabunda started his work in the context of a project implemented in 1995, by the Christian Council of Mozambique that has been scouring the country and collecting weapons from individuals and communities after a civil war that lasted almost twenty years. In this project some weapons are destroyed while others are deactivated and given to men and women like Mabunda, to sculpt into art. Some 800,000 weapons have been collected since the CCM launched this project, called Transforming Guns into Hopes.
The name is inspired by a Bible verse from the book of Micah: 'They will hammer their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks'.