Multimedia artist and elucidator Nástio Mosquito was trained in communication strategies and became a film director early in his career. He pursued his trajectory in media and communication with an interest in disrupting traditional codes of message delivery by embracing an artistic practice driven by sound, video, installations, poetry, and performance. Mosquito has long dealt with cultural inheritance, approaching the theme in cycles that bridge past, present, and future while avoiding a linear approach to time. Often looking to decentre notions of power as observed in his previous collaborative works with Bofa Da Cara My African Mind (2010) and My European Mind / Re-Branding Europe (2013), the artist has inscribed a signature practice known for poignant messaging capable of shaking the narratives asserted by oppressive systems. For the exhibition, Mosquito turns to the politics of the invitation and the politics of inviting. He reconsiders the call to young Angolan forces made through Rádio Nacional de Angola in 1985 with the promise of a scholarship to study in the German Democratic Republic. Many if not all of the enthusiastic young applicants were sent to work in factories on arrival: no scholarship, no studies except that of the German language, no questions allowed. On top of this, they also received no payment of their wages. Often referring to history as a time metric that he isn’t beholden to, the artist de-historicizes as a mode of subversion, drawing lines that prioritize non-western understandings of time and space. Through the making of the work, the artist takes action to honour and celebrate those that kept their dignity intact despite nearly forty years of betrayed hope.

Commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), co-produced by Nástio Mosquito and HKW, 2023–24.

Work in the exhibition: Grandmother’s Boy (History?!?) (2023–24), single-channel-video, Portuguese and English with German subtitles. Courtesy of the artist