The Norval Foundation will be presenting Grada Kilomba ‘s living installation ” A World of Illusions ” at its premises in Cape Town, South Africa. Until January 9, 2023, the foundation’s 1 Gallery will host this invigorating and immersive exhibition by the Portuguese artist.
Through mediums such as performance, music and dynamic scenography, Grada Kilomba creates unprecedented idyllic images to investigate questions of race, orientation and personality. This stunning installation, curated by Marie-Ann Yemsi, independent curator and contemporary art consultant, treads the African continent after appearing at the 32nd Sao Paolo Biennale, the 10th Berlin Biennale and the Palais de Tokyo in 2021.
Grada Kilomba, born in Lisbon in 1968, is a multi-talented Portuguese contemporary artist. Trained as a psychologist, writer and interdisciplinary theorist, her artistic work critically explores notions of memory, trauma, gender, racism and post-colonialism.
Grada Kilomba ‘s epic trilogy “A World of Illusions” is a means through which the artist is fundamentally reconsidering the old Greek legends that are conventionally presented to us as global, and transmitting new narratives. She arranges the characters of Narcissus and Echo, Oedipus and Antigone, combining performance, theater, movement and music, giving body, a voice and a structure to her own basic composition.
Drawing on African oral cultures and practices, Grada Kilomba takes on the role of the contemporary griot, a narrator who enables exemplary stories to be told straightforwardly about current issues centered on politics.
