This lecture performance delves into the now-formal systems of value making in Luanda which result from attempts to erase the ever present 'dust' of the city. Poulson takes a journey of recalling knowledge gathered from existing, observing and exchanging in a city where unwanted air-sensitive particles of ground incite economic responses and activities by the population.
Sandra Poulson is an Angolan artist who lives and works between London and Luanda. Poulson’s work discusses the political, cultural and socio-economic landscape of Angola as a case study to analyse the relationship between history, oral tradition and global political structures. Focusing on her local Luandan experience, history and knowledge to investigate and discover networks between micro-political moments and how they reverberate into macro politics. Her practice utilizes inherited societal memory from colonial Angola and the civil war to dismantle contemporary narratives through semiotic and archaeological studies of ordinary objects as actors in political and cultural transformations. Thus, questions posed by the work are linked to the task of decoloniality.
Poulson graduated from BA Fashion Print at Central Saint Martins in 2020. Among various group shows and art fairs, she has shown at South London Gallery (2021), Liste Art Fair Basel (2021), Arco Madrid (2021) (solo), Lagos Biennial (2019), Abuja Art Week (2020), Art Joburg (2020), Firstsite, Colchester (2021), Lethaby Gallery (2021, 2018), Nunnery Gallery (2019), Copeland Gallery (2018).
Poulson has had screenings at the Guggenheim NY (2021), Salts Basel (2021) and Boda Boda Lounge (2020). She was awarded the Mullen Lowe Nova Award 2020, Your Nova Award 2020, the CSM Deans Award 2020, was selected for New Contemporaries 2021 and the BNC Digital Fellowship 2021.
Her work has been featured in Frieze Magazine, New Currency Magazine, Vogue US, Vogue Italia, Vogue Brasil, I-D, The Face, FAD Magazine, Creative Brief, Where’s the frame?, 10 Magazine, Creative Review, Artnet News, Jornal de Angola, AnOther Magazine among others.
The lecture performance is part of the project The Sound Is the Monument by Kiluanji Kia Henda which has received funding by The Fritt Ord Foundation and Bergen City Council. Volt’s programme for 2022 is supported by Bergen City Council, Arts Council Norway and Vestland County Council.