NEWS SPECIAL REPORT
The Trienal de Luanda is coming: a new vision for art events in Africa
based on an interview with Fernando Alvim by Sue Williamson
Slowly recovering from years of war, the Angolan capital of Luanda is in the process of reinventing itself from the ground up. The first Trienal de Luanda, with the main events planned for March, April and May of next year, is part of this reinvention, and is set to take its place alongside, but be very different from, the other African international art events, Dak�Art, the Dakar Biennial and the Cairo Biennial. The theme of the Trienal is Art, Culture, History and Contemporary Politics
In many ways the brainchild of artist/gallerist/publisher Fernando Alvim, the Trienal has also enagaged the services of art consultants in the persons of Kendell Geers (Europe) and Olu Oguibe (USA). Alvim has closed his Camouflage Gallery in Brussels, opened in 1999 and always seen by him as a satellite space to Africa, and moved back to his home town of Luanda in order to be at the heart of planning operations. �We are starting at point zero�, he says. �We are creating a centre for contemporary art, with 16 000 square metres of space for art and film.�
For the Trienal, Alvim with his team of Albano Cordoso, chief curator for the event and Tiago Borges, is working with a group of architects from the School of Architecture in Luanda to renovate 30 spaces in the city to house the different exhibits, The first renovation saw the creation of SOSO Arte Contemporanea, a gallery space which grew out of a totally derelict building, completely transformed over a 12 day period into a contemporary gallery, to open with the inaugural exhibition of work by Viteix, one of the most important Angolan painters, now dead. A subsequent exhibition of work by young artists sold out on opening night.
The energy which brought into being this gallery in so short a time pervades all of the planning for the Trienal. �It�s a movement of self esteem�, says Alvim. Cultural mapping is playing a big part in the lead up to the Trienal, uncovering not only a popular history of art but also looking at sport: tracking African participation in the Olympic games, and the important presence of African sportsmen and -women in European sport today. All of this information will play background to the Trienal. �It�s going to be a very positive event, and sport - even sailing � will be included.� Talking about the contribution of Africa to the world, Alvim says �Mandela is a conceptual artist. He spent 27 years in his studio and then he comes out � and the consequence of that is enormous, not only in South Africa, but also in the world.�
In 1963, a Portuguese photographer traveled the country photographing ethnographic paintings on the outside of houses. The names of the painters were not recorded. One of the Trienal initiatives will be to make more than 100 of these images into posters 2m x 1,50m to go up all over the city to make people aware of their own cultural history.
As a first project in literature, 50 writers have been asked to write five sentences each, and 100 of these text billboards will go up around the city. There will also be ten 6m x 3m billboards for photographers, and in a project for schools, blank white posters with the name of the Trienal de Luanda at the bottom will be distributed to more than 100 schools. The children will be given the posters to do their own artwork on them, and these too will be put up. In this way, the knowledge of the Trienal will be spread at every level through the city.
The Trienal is being financed not only by the Ministry of Culture but also by initiatives by the organizers in drawing in business partners, acting as art consultants for clients like banks, and carrying out design commissions like new telephone cabins for the national telephone company. 'In 2004 we had 485 meetings', says Alvim. 'Of those, 60% were economic, 30% were political and 10% were with artists.' The very fact that he can roll these numbers off his tongue with such ease is a measure of the kind of detail which is going into the planning of the event.
The national airline is one such partner, and will carry the lettering TRIENAL DE LUANDA in orange on the nose of planes to mark the event. On one day, the airline will fly curators and artists to the desert for a day �to consider the aesthetics of emptiness�, says Alvim.
Passengers on the planes headed for the Trienal will be handed the first of six catalogues as they get on the plane, so that by the time they reach Luanda they will already have had an opportunity to read up on the event. Each catalogue already has a different sponsor. International curators involved at this stage include Laurie Farrell of Museum for African Art in New York, who will fly there in October for planning meetings, and Paulo Herkenhoff, of the Museum of Beaux Arts in Rio de Janeiro.
The breadth of the planning, the vision of an international art event set in the mother continent of Africa which is also truly for the enrichment and empowerment of the population of the host city makes the Trienal de Luanda unique. One hopes its potential is fully realized.
