Ângela Ferreira

Collapsing Structures: Talking Buildings

Ângela Ferreira, Study on “Collapsing Structures: Talking Buildings”, © Courtesy the Artist, HKW 2012

In 1974, at the outbreak of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, the 4 Estações Hotel in Maputo, Mozambique, was nearing completion. The Portuguese colonial rulers didn’t want to leave the building to the Mozambiquens, so, according to legend, they sealed all the piping with concrete before leaving the country. After remaining vacant for 33 years the building, which was never completed, was demolished in 2007 in order to make room for the US embassy. Ângela Ferreira’s multimedia sculpture, with borrowings from the formal language of the HKW’s architecture, superimposes images of the hotel demolition and the collapse and reconstruction of the roof of the Kongresshalle. In the process, she follows the traces of destruction and reconstruction of ideologically motivated foreign policy both in Africa and beyond.