Angola: Wisdom is like a Baobab

João Masala Tembo - Hope and peace of the old zungueiras (2015)

“There are two challenges in particular – notes Luciano Benetton, the creator of Imago Mundi - for a country where much of the population still lives below the poverty line and struggles to access education and healthcare: to build a sustainable growth model with the proceeds from the oil industry, (currently suppressed by the fall in the price of crude), enabling the reconstruction of the infrastructure system, and to diversify areas of production in order to fully exploit the country’s other major resources like diamonds, iron and its fertile and rich land, ready to be cultivated again, now that the country is at peace.”

Jeremias Palanga - United Nations (2015)

Angola's capital Luanda, on the Atlantic coast, is home to over five million of the country’s total population of around twenty-three million, and is the very symbol of the country's contradictions: in the center it boasts gleaming skyscrapers, built with Chinese capital, while the suburbs are home to over-crowded shantytowns. “Yet – adds Benetton - Angola, which possesses an abundance of natural beauty unmatched in Central-Southern Africa, has everything it needs to become a new frontier for tourism in the twenty-first century. The country offers immense, almost unknown, territories, isolated for decades from rest of the world, a diverse landscape rich in beautiful scenery. Tropical beaches between Luanda and Benguela, the Namibe desert, the mountain plateau in the province of Huíla, protected natural parks and the Kalandula Falls, the second the largest in Africa, an almost magical apparition that reveal themselves without warning inside one of the vast rain forests.”

Domingos António Ferreira - Fate Allegory (2015)



The desire for change is clear in the words of Antonio Tomas Ana “Etona”, Secretary-General of the UNAP, National Union of Plastic Artists of Angola and World Master in Painting and Sculpture. “Today – states “Etona” – we are in a more open position, with a market economy. The new council of the UNAP has had to adjust to reality and therefore changes were required almost across the board. It was not an easy task because of the “vices” inherited from colonial times and this causes conflicts between the old generation and the new generation.”

Selvestre Isaac Quizembe - Cultural influence (Kionda) (2015)

“As for the diversity of plastic arts in Angola – continues “Etona” - first of all we must be aware that every artist is a person, each with his own behaviour, and in this case the artist’s behaviour results in his way of being represented in the arts, each with his own differences. That's why we have identified the traits that may look similar, but then they find a line starting from the assumption that everyone is different, that's why when someone creates copies, you will find differences from the original; the same happens in crafts, and all this means that the expression of one or the other lies in the difference, and because life is dynamic, the artists do not stop. In this dynamic there is a metamorphosis, so that man makes the coexistence possible, he observes other phenomena. The phenomenon of today may not be the same phenomena of tomorrow, these are variables, and these changes can be found in painting, sculpture or other areas related to this context.”

Victor Sebastião António (Vickson) - Luanda’s Bay at Night (2015)

“In this scenario of great artistic ferment - summarizes Luciano Benetton - the Imago Mundi collection contributes, amid references to the traditions of the homeland and Western influences, to the telling of a story that is also an invitation to view the country with completely new eyes. In the collection we find imagination, research, a strong affirmation of identity and, for those who are ready to see them, clues to a possible dialogue between cultures and peoples. As an African proverb says: wisdom is like a baobab tree, no one individual can embrace it.”