Nadir T. Watembo
2014
from the Tipo Passe series

• Edson CHAGAS

Tipo Passe is a series that addresses questions of history, culture and identity. The artist’s birthplace of Angola was subjected to colonial rule by the Portuguese from 1575 until independence in 1975. The local population’s culture and traditions were largely disregarded and ‘unseen’ by the European colonialists. The striking masks depicted here are borrowed from private collections in Angola: removed from their original context, they are stripped of their meaning and transformed into decorative objects, hiding the identities and individual characteristics of the sitters.