Virus

Suzana Sousa, Luanda, Angola. Curator, Art Critic

The work of Hildebrand Melo occupies an interstitial space between fiction and reality. The artist explores concepts and ideas from diverse backgrounds, from philosophy to science and transforms them. This transformation is placing Hildebrand Melo in a prominent place in the Angolan art scene since the artist has dismissed in its aesthetic approach a set of common places of Angolan Art, not girding even thematic or chromaticallyin themes called Africans. However, the reality that surrounds him feeding his creativity. The themes that Hildebrand has developed in his work are in some way connected to the city of Luanda, whether it be the candongueiro, which the iconography refers to a city or aesthetic lines of the Body and Soul series that look out to the churches of the city a narrative line. In this series, Virus, the artist takes us in the first instance for science, the virus that surrounds us, but the reading can also be more symbolic and touch on the human condition or the human aspect in a rapidly growing city like Luanda. The ability to transmute the virus is celebrated in this series by a set of color choices that erase the scientific gaze and expose us to the contexts and or allow us to question these contexts. The line of the artist remain in this abstract work offering to the viewer multiple possibilities of interpretation. This virus appears as an organic element to be transmuted to a machine, in a man, into a being in a relationship with the context, and this is also changing. And perhaps this is the main theme of this series, the change or the ability to change and adapt the man to various contexts. Once again Luanda as historical and geographical space is offered as background for his work. A mutating city that it relates the memory of the transformations of the country and the need to adapt to adversity of a people. This human perspective and think to characterize the social and historical processes of Angola has been recurrent in the work of Hildebrand and offers to the viewer a series of questions for discussion. The proposal is an open and honest reading of a country, a city of history and memory.

de Angola tem sido recorrente no trabalho de Hildebrando e oferece ao observador uma série de questões à discussão. A proposta é uma leitura aberta e franca de um país, de uma cidade, da história e da memória.