Reference: POULSON001
Title: AN ANGOLAN ARCHIVE
Date: 2021
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Includes written texts, research images, garments, voice recordings, drawings, wood artefacts, installation, photography, performance and video works.
Media: Archive
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: AN ANGOLAN ARCHIVE (AAA) is an assemblage of around 200 pieces of information in the form of written texts, research images, garments, voice recordings, drawings, wood artefacts, installation, photography, performance and video works. This is an on-going project that similarly to my practice in general, utilises a selection of common household Angolan items to discuss the relationship between family and inherited societal memory from colonial Angola and the civil war. Aiming to dismantle contemporary Angola through semiotics studies of such ordinary objects as actors in cultural and political on-going transformations. Here all items are studies not only in a material level, but mostly in a material culture perspective. What is the individual’s/society relationship with the material information?

The task of decoloniality is central to this work, as the notion of African led own Archives is still to confront the current realities being depicted by external bodies.

Reference: POULSON002
Title: The Ladder
Date: 2020
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: From AN ANGOLAN ARCHIVE
Media: Film [4m21s]
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: AN ANGOLAN ARCHIVE (AAA) is an assemblage of around 200 pieces of information in the form of written texts, research images, garments, voice recordings, drawings, wood artefacts, installation, photography, performance and video works. This is an on-going project that similarly to my practice in general, utilises a selection of common household Angolan items to discuss the relationship between family and inherited societal memory from colonial Angola and the civil war. Aiming to dismantle contemporary Angola through semiotics studies of such ordinary objects as actors in cultural and political on-going transformations. Here all items are studies not only in a material level, but mostly in a material culture perspective. What is the individual’s/society relationship with the material information?

The task of decoloniality is central to this work, as the notion of African led own Archives is still to confront the current realities being depicted by external bodies.

Reference: POULSON021
Title: The President Dress
Date: 2020
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: CSM Museum & Study Collection
Media: Fashion item and installation
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: President Joyce Banda’s dress becomes here a direct response to my general conditioning of understanding the president figure as being male. The president dress responds to the Angolan President T-Shirt and questions the reality of African micro politics while suggesting a democratisation of positions of power for all people. Later in the project, when the roof meets these subjects, the performance piece suggests both a male and female figure stepping on the Ladder (of power) and exiting a space where they share views and ideals with the common people.

Reference: POULSON016
Title: The Cuca Beer Crates
Date: 2020
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Crates and Archive Sheet
Media: Photograph
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: Both Cuca and Nocal (Angolan national beer companies) were created in the 60’s by Portuguese Businessmen while still under colonial power. Cuca was initially created and associated with football championships in the poorer neighbourhoods of Luanda, and by sponsoring such sports activities operated as structures for the Portuguese to monitor the unprivileged youth. The latter were the most likely to start the fight against the colonial power, and so, sports were a soft mechanism to identify and monitor them. (Bittencourt, 2017, p.875-876) The methods for the maintenance of colonial power by the Portuguese in the 60’s (when most African colonies were already, or became independent) lead Angolan independence to only happen in 1975, however, the principles of European hegemonic power seam to continue ruling the territory, and people. After the independency in 1975 Cuca became a state company often distributed for free at political rallies. It is essential to note the fact that the national beer continues to be marketed and perceived as beyond a product, but as part of the culture and identity of the people.

Reference: POULSON017
Title: The Colonial Column
Date: 2020
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Part of the The Colonial Framework
Media: Installation
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: Before lockdown at university's 3D Large wood workshop I was developing the Colonial Column, part of the Colonial Framework.

The Colonial Framework is a proposition for a literal/physical gesture of exiting the modes of operating inherited from colonialism, and perpetuated by coloniality. Such gesture at points in the project could be materialised publicly, as a person would wear the framework and then would detach from it. Initiating a new proposed cycle of decoloniality as a task affecting all aspects of social/cultural/political life.

Reference: POULSON018
Title: The Roof
Date: 2020
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Installed on the roof of a disused roof terrace
Media: Installation Photographs
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: At the time of this unauthorised occupation, I saw it as a way of producing work without any facilities, by building my own workshop at this space. As the work evolved and I spent about 8 weeks at the space. My understanding of it evolved, to come to terms with the fact that the occupation was itself the work, and anything I produced there, was an evidence of the time. Am I colonising this space?’

At the beginning of the first lockdown in 2020 it was really challenging to even imagine continuing the work without access to workshops, as my work in process involved using wood, casting, metal and screen printing workshops. It was also particularly difficult due to the large scale of some of the items of An Angolan Archive such as the ‘Colonial Column’. Eventually, after a month of debating with myself about a disused roof terrace of the building next to my flat, I decided to occupy it, using it as my studio, medium, and to some extent subject. T

he project evolved in ways that I could not have imagined outside the circumstances of lockdown. This process revealed to me the opportunity that lack of resources can be for my practice’s development, in a way the situation of lack was all I was used to. Where something was missing, my goal was to always build it. As peer researcher and practitioner Henrique J. Paris once said, ‘identity (or anything, in my opinion) is built upon emptiness’. Here perhaps the emptiness was The Roof.

Reference: POULSON019
Title: The Suit
Date: 2020
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Part of The Ladder series
Media: Fashion item
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: The suit has been adopted in Angola, as part of our relationship of coloniality with Portugal and later the pre-globalisation of Menswear. In the context of Luanda, the suit is worn as an elementary dress code for white and blue collar jobs.

When worn outdoors, the suit allows one, to maintain an average body temperature of 37°, due to Luanda’s tropical climate. In Luanda wearing a suit means one has to be respected and often called a doctor, despite their profession. Through my research of this object I have been interested in discovering the semiotic networks woven by items that people associate with due to their colonial connotation and therefore the possibilities around the illusion of power such objects can assign the body.

Reference: POULSON014
Title: Hope as a Praxis
Date: 2021
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Shown at Arco Madrid 2021
Media: Installation
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: I have been studying the multifaceted cultural/social meaning of the Monoblock chair in the context of Angola, in particular Luanda since a project in my first year of BA in 2017. Particularly documenting the ways in which the object inhabits the city and defines it architecturally. But also, the ways in which people respond to the ephemeris of the chair, that due to being the main form of furniture of the population, has an accelerated process wear, tear and eventually breaks. In Luanda when a plastic chair breaks, and they really do break all the time, people keep them in the house. Hoping to fix them by juxtaposition with another plastic chair broken in a different part, two broken chairs lead to a much stronger new one. This investigations have recently culminated on an Installation ‘Hope as a Praxis’ shown at Arco Madrid 2021, and that was awarded best booth of the Opening section with the Premio Opening.

Reference: POULSON013
Title: Plastic Chairs Juxtaposed in Luanda
Date: 2021
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Image of stacked Monoblock chairs in Luanda
Media: Photograph
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: I have been studying the multifaceted cultural/social meaning of the Monoblock chair in the context of Angola, in particular Luanda since a project in my first year of BA in 2017. Particularly documenting the ways in which the object inhabits the city and defines it architecturally. But also, the ways in which people respond to the ephemeris of the chair, that due to being the main form of furniture of the population, has an accelerated process wear, tear and eventually breaks. In Luanda when a plastic chair breaks, and they really do break all the time, people keep them in the house. Hoping to fix them by juxtaposition with another plastic chair broken in a different part, two broken chairs lead to a much stronger new one. This investigations have recently culminated on an Installation ‘Hope as a Praxis’ shown at Arco Madrid 2021, and that was awarded best booth of the Opening section with the Premio Opening.

Reference: POULSON012
Title: The Monoblock Plastic Chair
Date: 2016
Author: Taizhou Changheng Trado Co., Ltd
Details: Image courtesy of the Victoria and Albert archive. Manufactured in Shanghai, this chair is part of the Victoria and Albert museum archive as a reference to the ‘monobloc’ archetype.
Media: Furniture
Credit: collections.vam.ac.uk/chair-taizhou-changheng-trado

Description: I have been studying the multifaceted cultural/social meaning of the Monoblock chair in the context of Angola, in particular Luanda since a project in my first year of BA in 2017. Particularly documenting the ways in which the object inhabits the city and defines it architecturally. But also, the ways in which people respond to the ephemeris of the chair, that due to being the main form of furniture of the population, has an accelerated process wear, tear and eventually breaks. In Luanda when a plastic chair breaks, and they really do break all the time, people keep them in the house. Hoping to fix them by juxtaposition with another plastic chair broken in a different part, two broken chairs lead to a much stronger new one. This investigations have recently culminated on an Installation ‘Hope as a Praxis’ shown at Arco Madrid 2021, and that was awarded best booth of the Opening section with the Premio Opening. (more about the project can be found on sandrapoulson.com )
(images attached on the folder)

Reference: POULSON003
Title: Puking Convo
Date: 2019
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: ‘Puking convo’ is an opportunity for a direct conversation between two subjected representations of artists. Do they operate from ‘opposite’ sides of the culture and cultural appropriation spectrum? The work acts as a trigger for discussion about matters such as hybridity within a post-colonial world, cultural and religious assimilation, nuances of cultural appropriation, art popularisation, colonisation ‘purposes’, masculinity, power structures, and a number of excuses used to justify the above.
Media: Fashion item
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: This project operates as a land for investigation and discussion of practices of appropriation within art and design practices. The initial case study is the work of Grayson Perry, which is the commissioner as well as the tutor of the project, and costumer of the final garment. Here I use a photograph of the lady Grayson aspires to look like when dressed up as his travesty alter-ego Claire – Princess Diana’s stepmother. Using it as a base to discuss through drawings various layers of the contact zone between Europe and Africa starting from contacts that happened when the Portuguese arrived in Congo and Angola in the 15th century.

Reference: POULSON004
Title: Puking Convo [Planning Documents]
Date: 2019
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Annotated Sheets
Media: Paper
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: This project operates as a land for investigation and discussion of practices of appropriation within art and design practices.

Reference: POULSON005
Title: Puking Convo [Design Details]
Date: 2019
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Design detailing
Media: Textiles
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: This project operates as a land for investigation and discussion of practices of appropriation within art and design practices.

Reference: POULSON007
Title: Puking Convo [Illustration]
Date: 2019
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Illustration
Media: Images
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: This project operates as a land for investigation and discussion of practices of appropriation within art and design practices.

Reference: POULSON008
Title: The Halo Trust Waist Coat
Date: 2020
Author: Sandra Poulson
Details: Used by de-miners as a form of protection for vital organs during de-mining process.
Media: Fashion item
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: The particular coat I have been looking at is part of Halo Trust de-miner uniforms. The image here, is of a visually identical artefact I have made, and been investigating through my practice.

Reference: POULSON009
Title: On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis
Date: 2018
Author: Catherine E. Walsh and Walter Mignolo
Details: The theory and praxis of decoloniality is explored by drawing upon examples of decolonial movements in South America.
Media: Publication
Credit: spectrajournal.org/on_decoloniality

Description: On Decoloniality challenges the reader to question assumptions of Western epistemological predicates from perspectives that challenge the epistemic limitations imposed by the hegemony of Western and modern/colonial epistemology.

Reference: POULSON010
Title: Academia.edu
Date: NA
Author: NA
Details: Search engine for academic text
Media: Website
Credit: academia.edu

Description: Academia.edu is a core tool I use to research critical papers about political, economic, semiotic matters particularly in regards to Angola, as often books are very one sided, and multiple articles feel to me as more omnibus in the information provided.

Reference: POULSON011
Title: EU White Polo Shirt – Cabinda Farmers Club
Date: Unknown
Author: European Commission
Details: Taken from the European Commission Internal Partnership page
Media: Photograph
Credit: ec.europa.eu/international-partnerships

Description: The EU white polo shirt is a very layered example of how institutions and governments impose their imagery and make it a norm without it being questioned as propaganda. The white polo shirt, states at the back ‘Clube de Agricultores Familiares Cabinda’ – Club of Family Farmers of Cabinda, just above a European Union flag that occupies most of the width of the back of the garment. This example is extremely layered for a number of reasons. Firstly, why would a farmer’s club in the Angolan enclave of Cabinda have an EU flag printed on it? Why is the EU investing specifically in Cabinda Farmers? Why is it so visual? And why is this flag beyond an indication? It is big enough to be recognised in a distance. The enclave of Cabinda is located on the North Bank of the Congo River, which was a prime highway for the trade of enslaved people from the inland areas of the Kingdom of Congo, and a main port of shipment of slaves from the XV century, up until away after the official abolition of slavery in 1836. This image, has been, and continues to be key for my practice in what concerns my investigations regarding semiotics and decoloniality.