Encounter with Grada Kilomba
What Would the Bottom of the Ocean Tell Us Tomorrow, if Emptied of Water Today?
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior registration via email until 18 November
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The exhibition Opera to a Black Venus is the most complete display of the work of Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba in Spain. This activity sees Kilomba survey her work inside the exhibition space as she explores the themes of memory, trauma and postcolonialism that run through her artistic practice.
Kilomba is an artist who is widely recognised for a narrative practice combining performance, video, sculpture and installation, and in this instance the exhibition takes its name from her large-scale video installation which imagines a future setting on a dried ocean floor to reflect colonialism, climate change and forced migration. The work also includes an ensemble of artists from Lisbon’s outer edges, casting light on the voices and choreographic movements that summon resilience. Among other pieces, the show includes 18 Verses (2022), Sounds of Water (2023) and Labyrinth (2024), a work which employs symbolic materials and visual poetry, and features previous works such as A Word of Illusions (2017–2019), The Desire Project (2016) and Table of Goods (2017) in an approach to memory and post-colonial critique.
Grada Kilomba (Lisbon, 1968) is a Portuguese artist who lives in Berlin. Known for her multidisciplinary work centred on memory, trauma and post-colonialism, Kilomba explores concepts of memory and repetition through installations that combine performance, text, images and sound. Her work has been shown at prestigious events and institutions such as the São Paulo Biennial (2016), Documenta 14, Kassel (2017), The Power Plant, Toronto (2018), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022) and the Museum Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2024). She holds a doctorate (with honours) in Philosophy from the Freie Universität Berlin and an honorary degree from the ISPA University in Lisbon, in recognition of her intellectual and artistic work. Her book Plantation Memories. Episodes of Everyday Racism (Between the Lines, 2021) has been praised as a series of daily racist episodes written in the style of short psychoanalytical stories.
