Ihosvanny, b. 1975
Biography

Ihosvanny (Angel Ihosvanny Cisneros) was born in 1975 in Angola, part of the first generation of Angolan artists to come of age after independence. Self-taught, he began exhibiting through Os Nacionalistas, a Luanda artists’ collective formed in 1999, before developing an independent practice spanning painting, video, collage, photography and installation.

His work is preoccupied with Luanda’s urban landscape — what he has described as the physical chaos and psychic experience of the city — transforming scenes of disorder and confinement into what one critic called “sharp visual poetry” centred on rescuing forgotten places and overlooked people from anonymity. He divides his time between Luanda and Barcelona.

Ihosvanny represented Angola in the African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and has since exhibited at the Luanda Triennale, the 11th Havana Biennial, the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia in Salvador and the Jewish Museum in New York, among other venues across Africa, Europe, Brazil and the Caribbean. In 2019 he undertook a residency at the Delfina Foundation in London. His work is held in the collections of the Sindika Dokolo Foundation, the Elipse Foundation and the PLMJ Foundation, and he is represented by the Movart gallery.

In Lisbon, Ihosvanny presented, for the first time in Portugal, a solo exhibition at Influx Contemporary Art — the exhibition programme run alongside African Contemporary between 2009 and 2011.

source: Buala; Delfina Foundation; Hangar — Centro de Investigação Artística; artnet