Diaspora Aesthetics
A Brush Against Erasure: Maria Auxiliadora's Return to the Bienal
The 36th Bienal de São Paulo opens its archives and its halls to an artist once ignored, transforming institutional memory into an act of cultural restitution.
Diaspora Aesthetics
Beauty in exile, identity in motion.
Diaspora Aesthetics
Portugal’s Memorial Must Reveal What Empire Tried to Hide
On Kiluanji Kia Henda, colonization, and the unfinished project of public memory.
Diaspora Aesthetics
Jacira Roque de Oliveira: The Matriarch Who Turned Pain Into Power
Jacira Roque de Oliveira didn't just raise Brazil's most important rap dynasty—she invented an entirely new language for Black resistance
Diaspora Aesthetics
Mapfara’s Earthwork: Clay as Rebellion, Memory as Form
In a postcolonial art world still obsessed with biennales and borders, the Mozambican sculptor quietly rewrites the language of matter.
Diaspora Aesthetics
The Alphabet of Monsters: Fefe Talavera’s Ritual of Rupture
In the cracked walls of São Paulo, letters sprout claws, beasts take shape from typeface, and chaos refuses to be tamed. Fefe Talavera doesn’t paint for galleries—she paints for the restless subconscious.
Diaspora Aesthetics
The Mirror and the Lens: Neusa Sousa’s Portrait of São Tomé and Príncipe
In a country often reduced to chocolate and beaches, Neusa Sousa’s film offers something radical: a mirror held up to everyday life.
Diaspora Aesthetics
Between Shores and Systems: Where the Coquí Sings
Kongo Square Studio brings rhythm, research, and reciprocity to the centre of a quietly radical design practice.
Diaspora Aesthetics
Brasil 2408: When the World Ends, Who Gets to Rebuild It?
Afro-Brazilian Futurism, Climate Apocalypse, and the Revolutionary Power of Ancestral Memory.
Diaspora Aesthetics
The Hair Map: Weaving Identity in Salons from Luanda to Lisbon
In Afro-diasporic communities across the Lusophone world, the act of hair care carries the weight of memory, resistance, and identity.
Diaspora Aesthetics
Diaspora, Dust, and the Dream of Continuity: Bissau’s Creative Insistence
How Artists Carve Meaning in a Country That Forgot to Fund Culture.
Diaspora Aesthetics
Diaspora Couture: Tailors, Fabric, and the Resistance of Stitching
How threads become tools of memory, migration, and power.
Diaspora Aesthetics
The Rhythm of Resistance: How Marrabenta Became Mozambique's Blueprint for Cultural Survival
In the humid backstreets of Maputo, kids are choreographing revolution with their feet. This is the story of marrabenta – the sound that rewrote the rules of resistance.