September 7 – December 10, 2017
Ângela Ferreira, Zip Zap Circus School, 2000–02. Courtesy of the artist.
In her architectural installations, Ângela Ferreira (Luso-South African, b. Mozambique 1958) explores the translation of forms and ideas across intertwined geographies and histories. For Ferreira, buildings are anthropological, sociological, political, and aesthetic structures. Working through a research-based practice, Ferreira cites the colonial past of Portugal and sub-Saharan Africa to create platforms through which alternative histories might be newly constructed.
This exhibition includes two of Ferreira’s installations on view for the first time in the U.S. Zip Zap Circus School refers to two unrealized projects by Modernist architects in different parts of the world: one by Mies van der Rohe in the Netherlands and another by Pancho Guedes in South Africa. By using these unrealized plans and models as the basis for her work, Ferreira points to how the plans become adaptable to other uses, contexts, lives, and events. Wattle and Daub connects Portuguese, African, and Brazilian histories through an ancient building technique, the slave trade, and Jorge Ben Jor’s Black consciousness in “samba-rock.”
Ângela Ferreira: Zip Zap and Zumbi is organized by DePaul Art Museum and curated by Julie Rodrigues Widholm, Director and Chief Curator. DePaul Art Museum is an Anchor Site of the Chicago Architecture Biennial with support from The Chicago Community Trust.
Research Guide