Galerias Municipais host a conversation around the solo exhibition Octopus and Myopia by Ilídio Candja Candja. This afternoon panel will take place on Saturday, 19 June at 4pm, in the gardens of Quadrum Gallery. Octopus and Myopia has been curated by Rafael Mouzinho and this talk will be led by artist and researcher Titos Pelembe. The dialoguing session will center on the exploration of the main questions that embody the imaginary and pictorial universe of Octopus and Myopia. The visual perception of the paintings by Ilídio Candja Candja suggest an expanded immersion of the spectator into the domains of spirituality and re-signification of cultural objects, memory and trauma of the past that continue present in contemporaneity. Each spontaneous gesture that results from pictorial, textural as well as formally imprecise experimentations that appear in the form of of stains, cut-outs, collages, graffiti and irregular lines in Ilídio Candja Candja’s paintings aim to translate the creative subjectivity of the search for new horizons. From this perspective of and immersion in new imaginary possibilities, the viewers are invited to establish a dialogue with the works on view, the artist and the others participants, in an attempt for joint reflection of the challenges that “Octopus and Myopia” poses.
Ilídio Candja Candja was born in 1976 in Maputo, Mozambique. He studied at the Visual Art School of Maputo and lives and works in Oporto. Recent solo exhibitions include Memory and fantasy part#2 at Galeria São Mamede, Porto and Legacy, Galerie Le Sud, Zurich (both 2019) as well as Nothing is Lost, Everything Becomes…Cosmos part#2, Galerie Frederic Storme, Lille and Freedom, Out of Africa Contemporary Gallery, Barcelona (both 2018).
Titos Pelembe (b.1988) is a PhD student in Art Education, Master in Art and Design for the Public Space at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto – FABUP. In Mozambique he graduated in Visual Arts from the Instituto Superior de Artes e Cultura – ISArC. Pelembe also graduated in Ceramics and Psychopedagogic Training from the National School of Visual Arts. He is currently developing multidisciplinary research in the field of post-colonial studies in triangulation with problems and issues concerning public space, visual arts practice and the respective mainstream art history teaching curriculum.