Raul Jorge Gourgel, Sandra Poulson, Plastic Broken Chairs, Juxtaposed, installation view, Lagos Biennial 2019.
Sandra Poulson
Born Luanda, Angola (1995), lives and works between London, United Kingdom and Luanda, Angola
Raul Jorge Gourgel
Born Luanda, Angola (1999), lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa
Plastic Broken Chairs Juxtaposed 2019
Garment installation
Courtesy of the artist
“In Luanda, just as in Lagos, ‘Lagoons’ are built with broken temporary plastic furniture and fenced in colonial style to delimit the area where different social classes navigate together.”
This project operates as a land for discussion about the sociocultural and economic value of activities of informal nature within the city. Whilst posing questions on the sometimes not obvious disparities between various layers of a particularly complex society. It touches on the relationship between different modes of informality, such as economies, building techniques, re-appropriation of land by merchants and the exchange of informal currencies. As well as disentangles lack as a possible driving factor for such activities. Plastic Broken Chairs, Juxtaposed looks closely at the urban spaces as hobs for creative responses to the absence of living conditions, otherwise not supplied by the government and respective institutions. Giving a platform for the transferable knowledge and skills that have been at the centre of survival and self-reinvention amongst populations that build their own infrastructures. The work is an ongoing collaboration that materialises through photography, video, text, textile print and beers in the best “buteco” (improvised bar) of Ilha de Luanda, which in contrast with some of the neighbouring luxury restaurants, consists of a counter and two tables.
