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"Beyond Boundaries - A Collective Odyssey" asserts itself as a visual meditation on the “interstices” — spaces of overlap, displacement, and encounter between distinct cultural domains. It is within this liminal terrain, between borders, that collective experiences of belonging, identity, and cultural value are continually renegotiated.
Unfolding across two venues — the Museu da Água and the Centro Cultural Cabo Verde — and bringing together 26 artists from multiple African geographies and the diaspora, the exhibition not only celebrates plurality and reinvention, but positions itself as an act of aesthetic insurgency: a gesture of active resistance to inherited borders, dominant narratives, and the fixed categories of art history.
Within this ever-evolving territory, artistic practice emerges as a critical force and as a generative power capable of reconfiguring the sensible horizons of the world.
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SELECTED WORKS
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Yuran Henrique, Untilted, 2024 -
Yuran HenriqueUntitled, 2024Mix media on paper140 x 99 cm -
Yuran Henrique, Untitled, 2024 -
Abraão Vicente, Idade em construção II, 2004-11
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Osias AndréSensações , 2025Oil on canvas
202 x 163cm -
Rómulo Santa RitaCoríntios 6:9-10, Serie: Filhos de Canaã, 2023Mixed media on craft paper, metal foil, gold leaf and spray paint145 x 195 cm -
Rómulo Santa RitaHebreus 13:5, Serie: Filhos de Canaã, 2023Mixed media on craft paper, metal foil, gold leaf and spray paint160 x 95 cm -
Rómulo Santa RitaProvérbios 1:19, Serie: Filhos de Canaã, 2023Mixed media on craft paper, metal foil, gold leaf and spray paint150 x 80 cm
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Ilídio Candja Candja, Untitled, 2022 -
Gonçalo MabundaO Anotador e o Labirinto, 2021Decommissioned weapons, metal and welding88 x 65 x 12 cm -
Francisco VidalUTOPIA MACHINE, COTTON FLOWERS, 2018Oil on Machetes182 x 152 cm -
Cássio MarkowskiEstrela, 2024Sculptural object made with graphite, vinyl paint, varnish, demolition wood and found objects87 cm x 25, 5 cm
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Cássio MarkowskiLabalábá, 2024Graphite, vinyl paint, colored pencils, and gouache on linen180 x 150 cm -
Pedro PiresTwo #1, 2019Intervention on paper160x122cm -
Ibrahim Bemba KébéBlood Memory, 2025Mixed media / acrylic on burlap158 x 170 cm -
Nelo TeixeiraUntitled. Series: Fragmentos da Chicala, 2021Acrylic, found objects, and other mixed media on wood137 x 157,5 x 10 cm
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Patrick BongoyPARODY 1, 2021Found inner rubber tubes250 x 300 x 10 cm -
Bev ButkowMoment of Memories, 2022Ribbon, plastic lawnmower cord, jewelry wire, dressmaking scraps, imitation pearls, string, wool, plastic beads, and galvanized wire137 x 88 cm -
René Tavares, Leve Leve, 2024 -
Eduardo Malé, Trono do Trolha, 2025
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Eduardo Malé, Negroides Assimilados, 2025 -
Barbara WildenboerGrowth and Differentiation I , 2020Hand-cut paper sculpture103 x 103 x 6 cm -
Alida RodriguesPapaver rhoeas L., 2019Mixed media collage on found photograph16,5x11cm -
Alida RodriguesStrange and Beautiful Bloom series. Brassica oleacea var. capitata, 2020Mixed media collage on found photograph16 x 10,5 cm; 31,5 x 25,5 x 5 cm (framed)
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Alida RodriguesStrange and Beautiful Bloom series. L. papaver spminiterum , 2020Mixed media collage on found photograph16,5 x 10,6 cm -
Alida RodriguesStrange and Beautiful Bloom series. Lepiota friesii., 2020Mixed media collage on found photograph16,6 x 10,9 cm -
Maya-Inès TouamCitron et plastique, 2020Fine Art print on Hahnemuhle paper64 x 80 cm -
Samuel NnoromBrook, 2023African Wax Print Fabric181 x 172 x 22cm
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CURATORIAL TEXT
It is in the emergence of the interstices — the overlap and displacement of domains of difference — that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated.
— Homi K. Bhabha,
The Location of Culture.
At the heart of every cartography lies a latent tension: between the line that delineates and the living matter that insists on overflowing. Beyond Boundaries. A Collective Odyssey arises precisely within that third space — both physical and metaphorical — an interstitial territory where contemporary African art asserts itself as an act of aesthetic insurgency, as a builder of visual counter-narratives against inherited boundaries, and as a force for reconfiguring the sensory horizons of the world.This exhibition gathers a remarkable constellation of artists whose diverse and singular practices bear witness to the vitality, complexity and vigour of a continent in constant reinvention of itself. Staged across two venues — the Museu da Água – Estação Elevatória a Vapor dos Barbadinhos and the Centro Cultural Cabo Verde — the exhibition proposes a visual and sensorial journey that challenges the rigidity of entrenched hegemonic thought and evokes memory as a political gesture of defiance.By probing deeply into the notion of “boundary” — whether territorial, identitarian, disciplinary, or epistemological — the curatorial gesture brings forth a body of works that dismantle univocal narratives, deconstruct colonial mappings, and restore centrality to the multiplicity of voices, stories, and forms that compose the kaleidoscope of contemporary African creation.This is, indeed, a collective odyssey — not merely in the literal sense of a shared passage, but as a shift of centre: from norm to margin, from canon to subversive gesture, from imposed memory to the critical reinvention of the archive. Each work on display functions as a fragment of a larger palimpsest, wherein textile, pictorial, audible and visual matter is summoned not merely as medium, but as testimony.The exhibition unfolds along three fundamental curatorial axes: materiality as discourse, figuration as resistance, and memory as political act.Materiality assumes a central role, challenging binary oppositions between art and craft, technique and concept, object and thought. Matter itself carries the violence of history and the potential for reconfiguration. Reuse and recycling are not merely technical operations, but rather symbolic strategies of subversion and aesthetic and narrative emancipation.Figuration, in turn, emerges as a gesture of restitution of the body — no longer as object of exotification or fetishisation, but as a fully-formed subject, inscribed in its dignity and complexity. What we witness is a critical reappropriation of the image, wherein the Black body ceases to be a projection of the colonial gaze and becomes the protagonist of an as yet untold narrative — intimate, political, cultural, and spiritual.Finally, memory — not as a crystallised past, but as a living field of dispute and reinterpretation — courses through the entire exhibition. Through a conscious reappropriation of material and symbolic archives, the possibility of reinscribing silenced cosmologies is evoked, not as a nostalgic gesture, but as a critical act of reactivation. Textile patterns become insignias of belonging, corporeality emerges as a living archive, and artistic practice becomes a tool for historical reinscription. In this gesture, the contemporary African artistic production on view affirms itself as a space of autonomous enunciation, symbolic healing, and epistemological restitution — reclaiming the right to imagine, narrate, and represent not only a world yet to come, but a time yet to be written.TEXT BY - Graça Rodrigues -
MUSEU DA ÁGUA
ARTISTS ON DISPLAY -
Abraão Vicente (Cape Verde)Bev Butkow (South Africa)Cássio Markowski (Brazil / Nigeria)Eduardo Malé (São Tomé and Príncipe)Francisco Vidal (Angola/ Cape Verde)Gonçalo Mabunda (Mozambique)Ibrahim Bemba Kébé (Mali)Ilídio Candja Candja (Mozambique)Nelo Teixeira (Angola)Osías André (Mozambique)Patrick Bongoy (D.R.C.)Pedro Pires (Angola/ Portugal)René Tavares (São Tomé and Príncipe)Rómulo Santa Rita (Portugal / Angola)Yuran Henrique (Cape Verde)
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CENTRO CULTURAL DE CABO VERDE
ARTISTS ON DISPLAY -
Alida Rodrigues (Angola)Amadeo Carvalho (Cape Verde)Ana Silva (Angola)António Ole (Angola)Barbara Wildenboer (South Africa)Cristiano Mangovo (Angola)Francisco Vidal (Angola/ Cape Verde)Manuela Jardim (Guinea-Bissau)Maya-Inès Touam (Algeria / France)Osvaldo Ferreira (Angola)René Tavares (São Tomé and Príncipe)Samuel Nnorom (Nigeria)Vivien Kohler (South Africa)
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EXHIBITION PROJECT ORGANIZATION
THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE Gallery - Organizer / Producer
THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE is an international contemporary art gallery, founded in Luanda in 2016 and based in Lisbon, Portugal. Through the representation and collaboration with both national and international artists, whether established or emerging, the gallery presents a program focused on relevant narratives and debates, associated with the European context and the Global South. With a pioneering spirit of decompartmentalization and inclusion, favoring intercultural dialogues, it is the first African gallery in Portugal to open its collaborative circle to both local artists and artistic productions from the Global South, including Brazil and non-Lusophone African countries. The gallery maintains a regular and significant presence at major international art fairs.
Centro Cultural de Cabo Verde - Organizer / Producer / Host
The Cape Verde Cultural Center in Lisbon is an undeniably important space for the dissemination and promotion of Cape Verdean culture and history in Portugal. Located in the Portuguese capital, it is a multifaceted space, offering a wide range of activities and events aimed at both the Cape Verdean community and the general public, including art exhibitions, concerts, lectures, workshops and other cultural initiatives. Its dynamic cultural program has a significant impact on the preservation of Cape Verdean cultural identity, thus constituting an important means of promoting cultural diversity in the city.
Museu da Água - Organizer / Host
The Water Museum brings together and promotes a group of monuments and buildings built between the 18th and 19th centuries - the Águas Livres Aqueduct and the Loreto Underground Gallery, the Mãe d'Água Reservoir in Amoreiras, the Patriarcal Reservoir and the Barbadinhos Steam Pumping Station. The five museum spaces represent an important chapter in the history of the water supply to the city of Lisbon and are part of the historical, heritage, technological and scientific Water Route. The Water Museum's long-term exhibition, housed in the Barbadinhos Station, provides an interdisciplinary approach to the theme of water that combines history and sustainability and invites visitors to explore content such as the presence of water on planet Earth, the history of the water supply to Lisbon, the hydrological cycle, the urban water cycle, water pollution and the water footprint.
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ABOUT THE GALLERY
IBRAHIM BEMBA KÉBÉ Solo Show - Until August 1stTHIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE is an international contemporary art gallery, founded in Luanda in 2016 and based in Lisbon, Portugal. Through the representation and collaboration with both national and international artists, whether established or emerging, the gallery presents a program focused on relevant narratives and debates, associated with the European context and the Global South. With a pioneering spirit of decompartmentalization and inclusion, favoring intercultural dialogues, it is the first African gallery in Portugal to open its collaborative circle to both local artists and artistic productions from the Global South, including Brazil and non-Lusophone African countries. The gallery maintains a regular and significant presence at major international art fairs. -
CREDITS
CURATORSGraça RodriguesSónia RibeiroRicardo Barbosa VicenteTEAMSónia Ribeiro | DirectorGraça Rodrigues | CuratorSofia Tudela | AssistantFrancisco Blanco | DesignerFor more informationgallery@thisisnotawhitecube.comOPENING HOURSCentro Cultural Cabo Verde:Tuesday to Thrusday - 12: p.m. to 7:00 p.m. | Friday and Saturday - 1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.Museu da Água (Estação Elevatória a Vapor dos Barbadinhos):Tuesday through Sunday, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
BEYOND BOUNDARIES - A Collective Odyssey: Group Show
Past viewing_room

