Redefining the Power IV (Series 75 with Miguel Prince)

Kiluanji Kia Henda
Redefining the Power IV (Series 75 with Miguel Prince), 2011
Matte paper print on aluminum
Work: 150 x 100 cm

Kiluanji Kia Henda lives and works between Luanda and Lisbon. Practicing in the fields of photography, video, and performance, the arist employs a surprising sense of humour to unpack perceptions of postcolonialism and modernism in Africa. His conceptual edge has been sharpened by immersing himself in music, avant-garde theatre, and collaborating with a collective of emerging artists in Luanda’s art scene. In ‘Redefining the Power’, Kia Henda creates a series of photographs of people striking poses on the empty plinths of Luanda where colonial statues once stood. Taking the form of statues of colonial and historical figures placed in a transit-zone in Luanda, the artist questions just how Africa wishes to position itself historically; possibly inventing a history. As the series demonstrates, Kia Henda’s work predominantly operates in the liminal space between fiction and reality. Neither a classical nor documentary photographer, Kia Henda appropriates and subverts the context of existing forms in order to create a fiction whose reality can never be entirely divorced from the real world.