“From both an artistic and a scientific perspective, all humans belong to a single species, Homo sapiens, and share almost the same DNA. Despite this common biological basis, people around the world live with many different languages, traditions and ways of life. I bring all of these together by blending colours.”
Artist and writer Dineke Blom visited the exhibition Bitches Brew at the Bonnefanten museum (Maastricht, the Netherlands) and wrote an impassioned essay exploring the role of personal figuration and the extent to which it reveals the artist. ‘In Bitches Brew, Keetje Mans, Tanja Ritterbex, and Aline Thomassen put an unexpected spin on personal figuration. ‘I take a life as lived by a woman as my starting point for each of the three exhibitions. The three artists share a great deal of their own lives—both in conversations with one another and through figurative elements in their work. Surprisingly, that open, personal aspect actually convinced me that Thomassen, Ritterbex, and Mans are masters of the art of concealment. False trail, smokescreen, witches’ brew—it is all encapsulated in that intriguing group portrait accompanying the exhibition.’
The exhibition functions as a window into a neglected area of Cuban art. It makes it possible to recognize interconnected artistic trajectories, lives, and aspirations that would otherwise appear as isolated and unique. Explorations of identity, memory, and the body emerge as ways of reclaiming imagined origins and participation in an existential and symbolic heritage fractured by forced diaspora.[v]
Her work situates her within a new generation of artists engaging memory, identity, and selfhood with nuance and introspection. It is a trajectory that signals both clarity of vision and an openness to evolution.
In the contemporary context of Luanda, these artists incorporate critical subjectivities that transform the artistic space. They rewrite narratives about gender, nature, memory, and power. Their practices not only make social and ecological wounds visible, but also affirm the capacity for agency and reinvention.
Elizabeth Elizabeth Pozo Rubio on Female voices reinventing contemporary art in Angola