Born during Portugal’s colonial regime in Mozambique and having lived and worked in apartheid South Africa, Ângela Ferreira has always navigated tensions between colonial systems and the people they govern. Her creative practice picks up on these tensions as it explores interculturality, identity, and the consequences of coloniality in relation to the complexities of independence and liberation. The work Klutsis goes to Algeria nº2 (2024) continues her research on the three-dimensional structures of political communication designed by the Russian constructivist Gustav Klutsis at the beginning of the twentieth century. Turning Klutsis’s drawings into sculptures, this new work is a continuation of previous projects that focused on the dissemination of political beliefs, in particular Rádio Voz da Liberdade [Voice of freedom radio], La Voix de l’Algérie Libre et Combattante [The voice of a free and fighting Algeria], and Radio Fanon. Across these projects, the artist explores the role of radio in the liberation of formerly colonized African people, and in particular the support of Algeria for Portuguese-speaking dissidents of the Salazar regime. The sculpture and two large radio towers materialize the constructivist aesthetics of Klutsis, but pay homage to the Algerian liberation movement through the work’s sound components. Ferreira combines excerpts of a radio broadcast by La Voix de l’Algérie Libre et Combattante, the radio station created by the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria during the war against French colonial powers in the 1950s and 60s, with audio from the Algerian film La Patrouille à l’Est (Patrol in the East, 1971) directed by Amar Laskri. The artist thus teases out common threads between liberation movements in the South and solidarity across the socialist bloc, with Algeria at the heart of this nexus. The work speaks to South–South solidarities, complicating the narrative of a block mentality that pits East against West.

Commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), co-produced by Ângela Ferreira and HKW, 2023–24.

Works in the exhibition: Klutsis goes to Algeria nº2 (radio orators series) (2024), aluminium, MDF, plexiglass, photographic print on plexiglass, sound, dimensions vary, audio track 1′33″. Courtesy of the artist