Cassi Namoda is a painter whose work transfigures the cultural mythologies and historical narratives of life in post-colonial Africa, particularly those of the artist’s native Mozambique. Namoda’s paintings are highly elusive, drawing upon literary, cinematic and architectural influences that capture the expansiveness of her specifically Luso-African vantage point. The idiosyncratic subjects who appear and reappear in Namoda’s paintings also convey this hybridity: they emerge from African indigenous religions just as much as they spring from Western mythologies. Her work borrows from an art historical canon and arises from vernacular photography in equal measure.
The beggars, 2023
Oil on canvas
152.4 x 127 cm / 60 x 50 in.
Unique
A road that leads to nowhere, 2022
Oil on canvas
12.7 x 12.7 cm / 5 x 5 in.
Unique
A gentle rain is dying, 2022
Oil on canvas
12.7 x 12.7 cm / 5 x 5 in.
Unique
On show at Namoda’s solo booth as part of Tomorrows/Today curated by Natasha Becker and Dr Mariella Franzoni is a new body of work titled Mantakassa, Limp and no memory. Presenting new work that follows two exploratory threads; the depiction of the beggar in art history and reflections on mantakassa, a poison from sour yam in Mozambique which folklorically infers no memory of the past.
Distant yearning, 2022
Oil on canvas
12.7 x 12.7 cm / 5 x 5 in.
Unique
Soft Cripples, 2022
Oil on canvas
10.2 x 10.2 cm / 4 x 6 in.
Unique
Mother & child from Xaxaxa, 2022
Oil on canvas
12.7 x 12.7 cm / 5 x 5 in.
Unique
During her time spent in residency at the Albers Foundation in South West Cork, Ireland, Namoda was fascinated by the deep and tragic history of the potato famine that had ruptured many lives and forced migration. The reality the Global South is faced with today is an ominous one with food scarcity, dangerous migrations, and threatening weather patterns that have been the subject of our concerns. It felt natural to Namoda to paint these depictions as a dovetailing of two accounts.
An old man with no teeth, 2022
Oil on canvas
15.2 x 10.2 cm / 6 x 4 in.
Unique
Familiar hunger on the corner of Polana shopping, 2022
Oil on canvas
10.2 x 10.2 cm / 4 x 4 in.
Unique
between Meluco and Xaxaxaxa, 2022
Oil on canvas
15.2 x 10.2 cm / 6 x 4 in.
Unique
Limp and no memory, 2023
Oil on canvas
152.4 x 127 cm / 60 x 50 in.
Unique
Cassi Namoda (b. 1988) is a painter whose work transfigures the cultural mythologies and historical narratives of life in post-colonial Africa, particularly those of the artist’s native Mozambique. Namoda’s paintings are highly elusive, drawing upon literary, cinematic and architectural influences that capture the expansiveness of her specifically Luso-African vantage point. The idiosyncratic subjects who appear and reappear in Namoda’s paintings also convey this hybridity: they emerge from African indigenous religions just as much as they spring from Western mythologies. Her work borrows from an art historical canon and arises from vernacular photography in equal measure. While they appear straightforward, her images are conceptually rigorous and portray figures with complex narratives. Namoda is equally attentive to landscape, creating scenes that depict both the rural and the urban through a surreal lens. Having lived in Haiti, the United States, Kenya, Benin, Uganda and other countries, Namoda has acquired a grasp of place that is at once grounded and subversive. Her landscapes resound with the features of equatorial life – blazing suns, palm trees –but they are mythic in their representation and pleasantly impeccable – mirroring the subjects that populate them.