Mozambique: France awards Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters to Moreira Chonguiça
Lusa / Felix Mula
The 11th annual Novo Banco Photo Award jury has decided to distinguish the “aesthetic uniqueness” of the work of Mozambican artist Felix Mula, whose winning work deals with identity and memory.
The winner was announced yesterday at a ceremony at the Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon, where new works by the three finalists are being shown.
The finalists were Mula, Mónica de Miranda from Angola and Portugal’s Pauliana Pimentel.
The international jury highlighted “the talent that is revealed through the aesthetic singularity” of Mula’s work, and “an awareness of the unknown, which will hopefully continue in his future work”.
In his winning installation entitled “Comings and Goings” (Idas e Voltas), Mula gathers photos, text, documents and mementos that record the story of a Chinese family his own family knew when they lived in Mozambique, and who moved to Portugal after independence.
At the same time, Mula presents images of places that are testimony to Mozambique’s past, ruins swallowed by nature along with the memories of people who lived there.
Receiving the award, Féliz Mula, 37, said: “I dedicate this award to my father, Albino Cuatine Mula, and Lee Tat Kann.”
Speaking to journalists, he said that he had learned photography at the age of 13 from his father, who was in turn taught by a Chinese friend, the owner of the store where he worked.
“This work is a search for questions and answers about who I am, where I come from, where my father and the Lee family come from,” he said, in the course of which he had made a prolonged survey of abandoned places and their former use.
Born in Maputo, Felix Mula attended the National School of Visual Arts and the Centre for Documentation and Photographic Training in Maputo, before joining Reunion Island’s Superior Arts School. Since 2012, he has taught at the Higher Institute of Arts and Culture in Maputo.
The jury consisted of curator and film producer Élie Atangana, artist, David Claerbout, and Yves Chatap, curator, editor and founder of Vusdafrique platform, and the three artists’ work will be on display at the Berardo Museum until October 2.
The 40,000 euros Novo Banco Photo Award is the largest visual arts prize in Portugal. It is organised by the Berardo Collection Museum, in partnership with Novo Banco. The award goes to an artist from the community of Portuguese-speaking countries.
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