Along the equator, in the soft shadows of cacao trees and volcanic ridges, a quiet cultural revolution has been unfolding for thirty years. Far from the global art capitals, the São Tomé and Príncipe Biennial of Art and Culture offers something radically different: not spectacle, but commitment. Not trends, but transformation. Since its founding in 1995, the biennial has carved out a new role for art—as a tool for collective remembrance, for local resilience, and for imagining a Lusophone future beyond empire.

A History of Art and Absence

Since its first edition, the São Tomé Biennial has emerged from the vision of João Carlos Silva—a culinary icon, cultural agitator, and one of the archipelago’s fiercest advocates for art as a form of citizenship. From his base in the roça of São João dos Angolares, Silva turned derelict colonial-era plantations into spaces for dialogue, education, and artistic production.

Before the biennial, there were no institutions offering formal arts education on the islands. The Teia d’Arte gallery, founded by Silva, filled that void by hosting workshops with guest artists. But it was the emergence of a third generation of Santomean artists—such as René Tavares, Adilson Castro, Geane Castro, and Kwame Sousa—that gave the biennial its true backbone. These were artists returning from study abroad, bringing hybrid aesthetics, political urgency, and a deep connection to their homeland.

Yet, in a country where over 75% of the population is under 20 and economic precarity shapes daily life, creating a sustainable cultural ecosystem remains a challenge. The biennial, and the spaces that orbit it—CACAU, Roça Mundo, FACA—are not just about art, but about giving voice to an island whose history has too often been told from elsewhere.

Threading the Colonial Tension

Among the most visually ambitious works of the 2019 edition was Água Grande, a monumental tapestry designed by Dutch artist Nikkie Wester. With support from the DROOG design collective, Wester enlisted thirty weavers from the town of Neves, trained them in loom techniques, and led the creation of a tapestry that depicted São Tomé’s ecological history—from native flora to plantation crops to modern-day cuisine.

But beneath its surface beauty, the project was mired in contradiction. The tapestry—meant to reflect Santomean history—was executed with imported threads and dyes, designed from abroad, and ultimately credited to Wester alone. Despite her stated intention to “step back,” the artist remained the sole author in exhibition narratives. Interviews with local coordinators revealed that the weavers followed pre-set patterns with limited autonomy, contradicting the project's narrative of empowerment.

What was framed as a collaboration ended up replicating the logic of outsourced labor and aesthetic appropriation: island hands weaving a vision not their own.

A Different Kind of Collaboration

By contrast, Santomean-led projects brought a deeper resonance. In O Mundo das Voltas, a video work created through a workshop led by Nigerian-Lusophone-aligned artist Emeka Okereke, local participants took control of their own narratives. Structured around five chapters—disability, fashion, daily life, historical memory, and a fictional vignette on São Tomé’s Independence Square—the piece offered a fragmented but intimate portrait of the island through Santomean eyes.

The project drew from Okereke’s Invisible Borders initiative but adapted its methodology to local realities. Every decision was made collectively. Authorship was shared. The artist acted not as auteur, but as catalyst. What emerged was not just a film, but an act of self-representation—one that disrupted the exoticism often projected onto African islands.

In FACA—Fábrica das Artes, Ambiente e Cidadania Ativa—collaboration took an even more grounded form. A permanent space initiated by Silva in Água Izé, FACA trains women and youth in sewing, basketry, metalwork, and environmental art. It’s part school, part studio, part social infrastructure. Craftspeople like Ivete Amaro and sculptor Geane Castro lead workshops. Portuguese designer Sónia Pessoa works with children on recycling-based fashion. Every piece sold, every object made, becomes a small intervention in an economy otherwise defined by extraction and precarity.

The Mask as Mirror

But perhaps the most profound intervention in Santomean imaginary comes from within. In Reino Angolar – A Origem, local artist Kwame Sousa constructs an artistic and philosophical journey into the history of the Angolar people—a culturally distinct community believed to descend from shipwrecked slaves who resisted Portuguese domination. The project began in 2017 and includes months-long residencies in Angolar villages, paintings, essays, and educational outreach.

The series—painted in oil, with motifs of masks, bodies, and layered textures—blurs the line between abstraction and figuration, between memory and myth. For Sousa, the mask doesn’t hide, it reveals. It becomes a medium through which Santomeans can re-encounter themselves—no longer as remnants of colonial violence, but as inheritors of resistance.

Beyond the canvas, Sousa also founded Atelier M, São Tomé’s first independent art school, offering free three-year courses to emerging artists. His mission? To train a generation capable of reimagining the country’s image—from the inside out.

Imaginaries in Conflict

Yet, for all these efforts, Festival N’Gola couldn’t escape the entanglements of power and perception. The main exhibition at CACAU included many acclaimed African artists—but most were selected for their resonance with international taste, not local relevance. Despite the biennial’s Lusophone framing, few Santomean artists were featured centrally. Collaborative projects with locals were mostly confined to satellite spaces like FACA or Baiá da Bô.

The curatorial vision leaned heavily on aesthetic tropes: vivid colors, eccentric costumes, and Afro-futurist gloss. What was absent, in many cases, was the subtlety of local narratives—the kind of slow, embedded storytelling that Sousa, Castro, or the young video artists in O Mundo das Voltas offered.

As cultural theorist Dilip Gaonkar reminds us, the clash of modernities is never symmetrical. Western frameworks of progress, aesthetics, and value continue to mediate how African art is curated, displayed, and consumed—even in Africa itself.

Thirty Years Later: Stitching Together a Lusophone Future

As 2025 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the São Tomé and Príncipe Biennial, the archipelago finds itself reflecting on what has been accomplished—and what still lies ahead. In 1995, when the first edition opened under João Carlos Silva’s vision, São Tomé was emerging from the shadows of post-independence isolation. There were no fine arts academies, no major museums, and very few spaces where young Santomeans could encounter art, let alone make it.

Thirty years later, the legacy is tangible: artists like Kwame Sousa and Geane Castro have carved out international careers rooted in local identity. Collaborative spaces such as FACA have transformed decaying roças into creative hubs. And a generation of youth—many of them born long after independence—have begun telling their own stories through mediums like video, sculpture, and recycled design.

And yet, the biennial’s promise has also revealed its fragilities. It remains heavily dependent on European funding and external curatorial frameworks. At times, projects like Água Grande have unintentionally exposed lingering colonial dynamics—outsider vision executed by local labor under the banner of participation.

But the most enduring impact has not come from spectacle, but from long-term, situated practice. The Reino Angolar – A Origem series didn’t just depict masks—it reclaimed lineage. O Mundo das Voltas didn’t just document lives—it allowed Santomeans to see themselves, behind and in front of the lens. FACA doesn’t just train artisans—it reshapes economies from within. These projects, often operating under the radar of curatorial glamour, offer a grounded and generative vision of what art can do when it listens before it speaks.

If the next thirty years are to deepen the biennial’s social mission, some shifts may be necessary: decentralising curatorial power, investing in Lusophone artistic networks across Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and Mozambique, and supporting local art education as a right, not a luxury.

São Tomé is not a detour on the global art map. It is the map—unfinished, layered, in flux. The biennial, like the tapestry at its centre, is still on the loom.

To decolonise the imaginary is not to replace one image with another, but to reclaim the act of imagining itself.