2016 - 2017 / 2020: Francisco Vidal was our first resident artist and was part of multiple projects, including his solo exhibition “LUUANDA RISING”
After his participation in the collective exhibition "Glocal - No Regional de um Espaço Sem Fronteiras", Francisco Vidal was invited to be the first Wozen resident, developing a series of projects culminating in his first solo exhibition at the gallery, to be held in September 2017.
Francisco Vidal, Portuguese, Angolan and Cape Verdean. Born in 1978 in Lisbon, Portugal. Lives and works in Lisbon
Francisco Vidal, or Xico, as he prefers to be called, came to us in 2016, after accepting the invitation to participate in the collective exhibition Glocal - No Regional de um Espaço Sem Fronteiras. The 40 year old angolan artist entered Wozen’s space surrounded by the aura of mystery and praise that precedes most references to his name in the artistic circles of Lisbon, Luanda and London. His soft and low voice, his calm and poetic speech inspire one on simplicity, whoever one receives the first sentences of the renowned artist, who has participated in important galleries, fairs and museums around the world, such as the Freies Museum/Savy Contemporary in Berlin (2015) and the 56th Venice Bienalle (2015), and has works in great collections like the EDP Foundation and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. In this year of residency that followed our encounter, of which the individual exhibition LUUANDA RISING is the result, we can conclude that these first words were, in reality, just a superficial layer of what became a daily exercise on unravelling the intricacies of the artist’s complex thought .
Francisco Vidal is a codified language and, to be properly understood, it must be studied as such.
His first project inside Wozen’s residency, The Summer School (2016), followed by the Paper School (2017), reveals the starting point to the formation of this language, as well as the first of his fundamental structural pillars: the word. His experience as a teacher begins in 2012, in architecture courses in Luanda as a better way to provide for his family. As Francisco does not conceive education in its traditional sense - as a unilateral transit of knowledge, he strived to create an intelectual environment based on the purest of collectivism, in which thoughts can coexist and inhabit in complete freedom and harmony, with no owners or bindings. The result of this osmosis between professors, students, co-workers and family, brought to surface his first codes: UTOPIA LUANDA MACHINE _ AFRICAN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION _ REVOLVER, DESENHOS DE REVOLUÇÃO.
These new spoken concepts, in constant evolution, always welcoming and mixing new native terms - KIEKELELA, giving in to dance in Kimbundo_NOVA LUANDA _ Nova Lisboa _ o Umbundo_, each one with its particular origin and dense signification, have found its cradle in paper and its embodiment in painting, revealing the second of Vidal’s fundamental structural pillars: the visual signs. _NAMEDROPING FOR THE AFRICAN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION_ ,the artist shaped a fluid and intuitive style of work, as the Jazz that influences him so much. His language doesn’t follow a fix or linear order and its visual signs search the same higher plane of freedom of the words, which are projected in space through installations in constant mutation.
LUUANDA RISING comes as a first attempt to state the existence of _PENSAMENTO CONTEMPORANEO ANGOLANO (angolan contemporary thought)_ , where he searches to catalogue and present the essential elements of Angolan painting, parallel to honoring and immortalizing the operative elements of the working class - a romantic definition reserved to his pair artists, creatives and family. In this way, LUUANDA RISING is a maternal code that contains all other codes, representing the Utopia_UU_ of a free thought centered in Luanda, although dreamt in Lisbon’s geography, in accordance with his global concept _NAM - Non Aligned Movement and the gallery’s concept of World Citizenship.
Francisco Vidal is, at the same time, creator and collector, student and teacher, sound and image. His quest does not seek fulfillment, only expansion that follow ciclic (although irregular) movements, in which words become signs by means of collective ideas, originated in the free exchange of knowledge. Such signs unite to create an innovative artistic language that mixes past and future, symbols and literature, pursuing the true contemporary cultural identity of Angola and Africa.
The exhibition LUUANDA RISING marks the end of Francisco Vidal’s residency at Wozen, all technical and conceptual development condensed after a year of the artist’s practice inside the gallery. Simultaneously it states a new fase for futures discoveries in the infinite cosmos of angolan creativity. It is up to us, as art researchers, to truly thank for the unique opportunity of immersion within the intricate structure of the african artistic thought - fast, powerful, unpredictable and uncontrollable, that can now be appreciated in all its splendor of colors and traces, by Lisbon’s community.
Vidal holds an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts in New York. One of the most unique artistic voices recently to have emerged from Angola, he was part of the official selection of the Angolan Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), and also represented Angola at Expo Milan (2015). Recent exhibitions include: Museu Afro Brasil, São Paulo (2016), Tiwani Contemporary, London (2015), Freies Museum/Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2015), Instituto Camões, Luanda (2014), UNAP, Luanda (2014), Caloute Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2010) and Institute Camões in Cape Verde, Angola and Mozambique (2007). His work is represented in public collections including the EDP Foundation, PLMJ Foundation and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, as well as private collections.
