Nástio Mosquito and the Collaborative Model in Contemporary Art
The history of art is replete with models that could be read as a type of collaborative project. From the workshops of Medieval Europe, to the hands that assembled the terra cotta warriors, to the cumulative forms of nkisi figures, so many creative endeavors have been the result of input from multiple creative minds and technical hands. In a post-Enlightenment world, the market became ever more fascinated with the artist behind the oeuvre—the search for singular genius. By the mid-twentieth century, the Eurocentric art scene was obsessed with the cult of the artist. Brand, ego, and gloss are the building blocks for the sensationalizing circuit between art fair, public commission, and museum retrospective, a system predicated on an unholy blend of celebrity and creative merit. Though individuals, like Takashi Murakami or Andy Warhol, began to destabilize the relationship between solitary genius-artist and the cult of the unique object, a new trend in contemporary art has seen certain artists implement transparency in their practice: collaboration as a return to acknowledging the multiple authorships behind the acts of conception and creation.
This desire to tease out the underlying authorship—to recover the narratives of those who assist/create/input, but whose names do not appear on the final copy of the museum label—is not a jab at the capability of the named artist, nor an insinuation that these individuals are insidiously obscuring their partners. From studio assistants and project managers, to digital specialists, temporary consultants, and interns, are we really to believe that none of these individuals participated in the studio as a co-creator? Questions about the other minds and hands persist. She didn’t splice those videos together using her mind’s eye and best judgment? He didn’t employ his own gesture or technique in the creation of that wall hanging? In an age of biennialism where major installations and the proliferation of digital media run rampant, are audiences too quick to believe that the final product before their eyes is reducible to individual artistry? In the field of architecture, it is easier to avoid this mythologizing since it is generally understood that a building’s designer does not also serve as the construction crew. However, the narrative of the brooding genius persists in the visuals arts and—with few exceptions—many artists and galleries blithely brand the work as original: the result of a singular foray into an individual’s mind, world, and studio, crystallized into a unique product.
From collectives to collaborations, a minority of artists have historically presented alternative models for recognizing the human proclivity for group work. In workshopping concepts and coordinating elements of a larger project, this mentality honors the multiplicity of creative partners. To further explore this collaborative model, the remainder of this study recounts specific projects from the ever-evolving practice of Nástio Mosquito, an artist whose career is defined by the extent, variety, and transparency of his partnerships.
The Genesis of Nástio Mosquito
Figure 1. NASTIVICIOUS, Ending Bad People is Ambiguity The Strength, the Courage & the Audacity is in Trusting the Universe! Have Faith, a Violet Spirit, be an Eagle, never loose Hope Be Coherent & U will find (the) Tangibility of Life, 2015. Wallpaper, dimensions variable, Courtesy Nastivicious ©; Exhibition view Daily Lovemaking (2015), IKON Gallery, Birmingham; Photo by Stuart Whipps ©
Scholarship on his work from the last decade categorizes Nástio Mosquito—in all his manifestations—as a sarcastic, cheeky provocateur (Figure 1). Since his art practice began in 2006, the prolific nature of his digital videos, songs, and web art earned him a reputation as a technophiliac. The other strand of his artistic production is performance-based and includes spoken word, musical interludes, and scenes where he embodies or performs a character. Coming from a background in theater and television production, the artist’s affinity for performative staging and the spoken word is deep-rooted. Stemming from childhood, his “love affair” with language was the result of a schoolteacher’s punishment; Nástio was chided for his teasing declination of “to shit” and was forced to instead conjugate the verb “to defecate.”[1] In this moment, he understood the multiplicity and ambiguity inherent in language, concluding that several words could signify the same thing and still have divergent meanings.
According to Nástio’s own mythology, his career as an artist has followed an unpredictable trajectory. António Nástio da Silva Mosquito, who alternatively calls himself DZzzz, Gaviāo, Fly, The Night Fly, Saco, Nasty-O, and Cucumber Slice, was born in 1981 in Huambo, Angola. He rarely discusses his childhood in interviews, but he did receive some education in Lisbon and London, though none of it centered on training in the plastic or digital arts. As a young adult, he worked for several British television productions and documentaries where he served as the director of photography. He moved back to Angola after the civil war, settling in Luanda around 2002. Working as a journalist in 2005, his controversial segments resulted in him being fired from the state-run television station. This spirit of censorship was the beginning of his career as an artist because it resulted in an afternoon where he transformed one of his reports on ‘match women’ (mulher fósforo) into a photo shoot of himself in their garb and makeup. One of the photographs he took that day caught the eye of Angolan curator Fernando Alvim who approached Nástio, extending him an invitation to exhibit in the inaugural Luanda Triennial. The artist initially refused but quickly relented when Alvim offered to buy them for eight thousand dollars. Nástio would also contribute the performance piece Alda Lara á Dentada, a tribute to the celebrated Angolan poet, to the Triennial. To this day, Nástio credits the “international vibe” and genesis of his artistic career to his participation in the Triennial.[2]
He continued to garner local attention when Sindika Dokolo, the Congolese art collector and businessman whose foundation sponsored the Luanda Triennial, added some of Nástio’s work to his collection in 2006. In addition to acquiring a new performance, mypARTyYourHouse (Valencia, Spain), for his collection, Dokolo also purchased some of the photographs taken during his cross-dressing shoot, including the widely-published Mulher fósforo. This photograph was then part of the collection chosen to fill the first and only African Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale. It is significant that Nástio’s work entered the global catalogue of contemporary African artists through its exhibition in Venice—not because the artist was directly chosen, but because his work was in the collection sent to represent an entire continent. A poetic reflection of his disdain for art world politics, Nástio’s entrance to the global artistic consciousness was almost by happenstance.
In a search for his niche, Nástio expanded his range of media. His next projects included the publication of children’s book Pai Natal, a viagem (Father Christmas, a Journey), a story wherein Santa Claus migrates to an African desert. Illustrated by Rodrigo Sepúlveda, this collaborative project resituated the foreign influences of Christmas décor and advertisements by localizing the fictional character for African audiences. “Why must our southern hemisphere children keep dreaming with a snow driven fantasy?”[3] Calling it “the most political thing I’ve ever done,” Nástio’s book was published in 2008 under the auspices of his newly established company, Dzzzz, which served as a consultation and production firm for cultural products. [4] 2008 also saw the foundation of Nástio’s Myspace account, a platform from which he began to share his unique style of smooth speech-rapping or slam poetry, a consistent vein of work that culminated in the release of his album Se Eu Fosse Angolano (If I were Angolan) in 2013. From 2009 onwards, his work solidified into his idiosyncratic style—which is to say that the work defies easy classification for its multiple authorship and blurring of media. One notable endeavor from these early years demonstrates his persistent interest in photography. In collaboration with Angolan photographer Matt Tali Massalo, he published the book Massalo (2010) and sparked public debate on female nudity. These ventures would inform Nástio’s later artwork and methodology as he increasingly sought partner-driven projects while exploring questions related to sexuality, representation, and narcissism.
My African Mind
Figure 2. BOFA DA CARA, My African Mind, 2010, video, 6’11’’, Courtesy Bofa Da Cara ©
One particular piece of video art raised Nástio’s profile on the global stage, bringing his name to the attention of new audiences. An analysis of this video’s creation and subsequent popularity demonstrates the uniqueness of transparent collaboration as a tent in this artist’s contemporary practice. His video, My African Mind, was created in conjunction with the Barcelona-based artistic platform Bofa da Cara for exhibition at the 29th Sāo Paulo Biennial in 2010 (Figure 2). A Frieze review called it “the most powerful piece in the Biennial,” resulting in the video, published on Bofa da Cara’s Vimeo page, along with this critic’s catchy tagline, to be shared, blogged, and reposted extensively across the internet.[5] Though the piece’s title refers to a self, Nástio made it clear that his works are neither reflections on his experience with Angolan warfare, nor are they from personal memory. Instead, he is the representative for what he terms the “tropa de indivíduo” (troop of individuals) and he wields his thoughts to combat the “violence of the colonial gaze and its present-day avatars.”[6] Despite his statements that he eschews proselytizing a particular viewpoint or ideology in his work, My African Mind was received as a decisively political statement. It was read as a reclamation of Africans in visual culture, a denunciation of the paternalizing and voyeuristic gaze on the continent—all theatrically re-narrated by Nástio.
The video, running approximately six minutes, has been termed “a provocative trip into that mental slavery built with a constellation of images crossing time and space.”[7] After opening on a black screen, the grainy sounds of panpipes dance in arpeggios. The narrator speaks as text appears on the screen:
That is how we became they
They became those
Those became it
That is how a race was born
A race begun
What follows is a suite of archival images, taken from colonial, anthropological, or missionary accounts. The illustrations have been digitized and layered within themselves to create a three-dimensional effect, similar to that of a diorama. Dozens of monochromatic engravings and drawings from archival material zoom out of the viewer’s gaze as the scene continually pulls backwards. Progressing chronologically, the images eventually take on color, vivifying the dazzling dress patterns and exotic flora and fauna that represent a foreigner’s nineteenth century (mis)conception of Africa.
At the 1:50 mark, the images shift from archival sketches to images taken from pop culture, comic books, and film posters. Images of the primitive Tarzan, Tintin in the Congo, or Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen (1951) scroll along, cataloguing the shifting relationships between the “Dark Continent” and the rest of the world. In her analysis of Nástio’s rummage through historical imagery, Nadine Siegert traces the figures from colonial trading posts to the human slave trade, from beasts to cargo, and from fascination to racism. The promulgation of the stereotypical savage in pop culture is directly linked to colonialism and its ability to read itself as a humanitarian act.[8]
The music changes jarringly at 3:55 to an electric guitar, accompanied by images taken from advertising. Kitschy logos and blocky headlines on a poster flash their wares—alcohol, crackers, coffee, detergent—all branded with smiling cartoon heads of black figures. The music fades out as the voices of auctioneers reverberate off one another. To this point, each scene has receded into the distance, moving away from the viewer. In this segment, the first to utilize black and white photographs, the viewer moves forward into each photo, slowly panning between the figures. The photos depict slaves standing on the auction block, working manual labor, or campaigning for freedom before the series reaches its crescendo. A voice shouts, “Sold!”
That is how those become mine & yours
Stories tattooed in exotic memories
Proud chest
“We did it…we did it,
we took it to them”
At 5:14, the music changes yet again to frantic drumming, but with the addition of an accompanying, wailing voice. The images here are contextualized within newspaper or magazine articles pertaining to African strife in the 1970s. Headlines and photojournalism sensationalize the violence and corruption for the consumption of international audiences, effectively casting a new shadow and homogenizing type over the continent. The final segment of text and narration confronts the video’s viewers as complicit in perpetuating the tenor of such conceptions about Africa:
Toxic aid, turn on war, turn off war
Feed me, feed mine
WELCOME
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
WELCOME
TO THE WONDERS OF POP CIVILIZATION
YESTERDAY, TODAY, YOU… PLANET YOU
The video is frequently billed as a co-creation of Nástio and the artistic platform Bofa da Cara, which is a “collective of contemporary audiovisual creators from Luanda, Barcelona, Mexico City, Valencia and Brighton who use video art, music, performance, documentary film and spoken word to transmit their discourses on today’s global society.”[9] The collective, co-founded by Nástio and Pere Ortin, an artist based in Spain, has published an artist’s statement and manifesto declaring, “We work with truths, lies, and perspectives, and we have no interest in winning elections or providing people with solutions.”[10]
The piece was first conceived in a Washington, D.C. bar in 2008, stemming from an anxiety these two artists felt while attending the exhibition Africa Now.[11] The stated purpose of the video was “to challenge those images from the past that we can’t control through a playful and provocative collage representing our minds” (emphasis added).[12] The work speaks to the universality of these images in the twenty-first century. The collage of My African Mind swirls alike in the imaginations of a Spaniard and an Angolan, two mobile individuals who manifest more identities than their nationalities. The artists’ refusal to delineate the authorship within the video’s production (who chose the images, found the music, wrote the text? etc.) echoes the opaque roots for the stereotypes that color today’s popular imagination. Just as the misrepresentation of Africa cannot be traced to a single image, neither can the identity of our contemporary global artists be reduced to one. These images seem to operate beyond control and the tropes that have seeped into our unconscious reveal a collective penchant for speaking definitions over “Africa.”
As a curator, Siegert took up the effect of these specters in her 2011 exhibition, GhostBusters (Savvy Contemporary, Berlin and Iwalewa-Haus, Bayreuth), which remounted My African Mind with the aim of employing imagination as a method for delving into our collective memory. Bofa da Cara’s mining of the historical and recent archive for images of Africa can be thought of as another form of collaboration, one wherein the artist works in dialogue with particular socio-cultural formulations of news, facts, and records that are anything but objective. Rather than framing his work as the reflection of his mind’s experiences or ruminations, Nástio incessantly acknowledged the role of others in shaping his practice—a trait evident in Nástio’s subsequent work that merits further consideration.
A Collaborative Artist?
An artist who cannot be pigeonholed to a particular medium, Nástio is a singer, poet, publisher, and performance artist. These categories seem inadequate when attempting a taxonomy of his work. This impossibility of classifying Nástio is due to the intersection of his media, as he layers new multi-media works over previous ones. For example, in his video installation 3 Continents (Europa, America, Africa) from 2010, he appeared in front of the camera as a performer, enacting the role of a pedantic reporter from the West who pontificates about ownership, supremacy, and consumerism. Three years later, for his performance at Former West (Berlin), this already-layered video was projected onto a screen as Nástio gave a new performance, African? I Guess. He stomped around the stage as himself and blended his songs with confrontational shouts before a bewildered audience. In the same performance, he also projected photographs from his collaboration with Massalo from 2010; the same photographs were part of his 2013 music video Mulher Madura that was directed by his long-time friend and collaborator Vic Pereiró. The layers of Nástio’s production are many and the interweaving of old/new/self/other is constant, but the names of collaborators are accessible and acknowledged.
In almost every biography that accompanies his works after 2010, his multi-media proficiency is touted: “One of the most energetic and versatile artists of his generation…”[13] Nástio is “…an all around provocateur… essentially a jack of all trades.”[14] Despite the range of media employed, there are recurring visual elements that betray the artist’s idiosyncratic production style. In the artworks—linguistic, plastic, or visual—Nástio’s self is present: a photograph of his face on a seat cushion, an actor in his own music video, his own words featured as web art. Where the artist is not visually present, his voice resonates in melody, cacophony, or accents, leading some to term him a “contemporary griot.”[15] If Nástio’s recent work is so distinctive, if his voice and face are so ubiquitous, are not his productions merely the reflection of ego—an isolation and elevation of the individual self? Is he building a brand with his face as the trademark? And if this could be read as self-conscious and self-promoting, where does collaboration—a notion valorizing multiplicity over singularity—factor into his oeuvre?
It must be stated that not all parties in a collaboration have the same level of input, nor does collaboration negate the possibility of hierarchy among participants. To collaborate is “to work with” and since his rise to global fame happened nearly a decade ago, Nástio boasts a long list of projects rooted in exchange and co-production. In addition to photographer Massalo, experimental videographer Vic Pereiró, and the collective Bofa da Cara, Nástio has also worked with the French interventionist group (ScU)2 in Johannesburg, Gabonese/French performance artist Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, and Morocco-based Japanese light artist Megumi Matsubara. Even his interviews—with Gabi Ngcobo, independent curator and artist from Durban, or Ryan Bartholomew, curator at the Walker Art Center—became a performance to be translated into new piece of digital or video art for his website (Figure 3). Recording Bartholomew’s questions, Nástio and Pereiró layered digitized words with electronic blips, creating a hyperstimulating work of web art that turned the traditional format of curator-artist interview on its head. It instead served as a platform, not only for the artist’s bravado and impropriety, but also for Nástio’s proclivity to work with, and off, of others. Here, he created as a response to a one-on-one interaction. A known genre where the power dynamic tends to favor the institutional curator, the artist interview was hijacked as art and Bartholomew became a partner in its development—another genre of collaboration.
Figure 3. NASTIVICIOUS, Nástio Answers Ryan, 2014, Video, 19’22”, Courtesy Nastivicious ©
The fact that the artist’s media ranges from digital art taken from a curatorial interview, to an iPhone app for his music videos, indicates a primary goal for Nástio’s practice. He “seek[s] new artistic platforms… to blend the often segregated acts of being, conceiving and consuming artistic experiences.”[16] Art should be holistic, authentic and not taken too seriously. Not afraid of working beyond the bounds of expectations, Nástio comes from a generation of artists who embrace their departure from white cube traditions. South African photographer Zanele Muholi has adopted the term “activist” in lieu of artist, a label also employed by Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu. Demonstrating some of his counter-system tendencies when it comes to the art world, Nástio rejected an invitation to show in the Venice Biennale when the curator asked for only part of a series. In his idiosyncratic, cavalier demeanor, the artist asks us: “You want new things, new thoughts, new ideas and approaches through the same ideas and channels? …No way!”[17]
Figure 4. Nástio Mosquito, Nástia's Manifesto, 2008, Video, 4’10.” Courtesy Nástio Mosquito ©; Exhibition view Daily Lovemaking (2015), IKON Gallery, Birmingham; Photo by Stuart Whipps ©
Nástio also directly addresses the notion of collaboration: “Collaboration is in fact a boring word, concept, and idea. But without it life has no taste, no value, and no consequence. I like the word ‘exchange.’ Life is exchange.”[18] In his 2010 video, Nástia’s Manifesto (Figure 4), his Russian-accented alter ego, Nástia, affirms the concept’s value: “Collaborate: not because you have to share the bill, but because you will grow taller with it.” Whether it is termed collaboration or exchange, Nástio’s work is subsumed by this practice and he acknowledges that the way to overcome stagnant preservation of the status quo is through new relationships that connect artists to individuals. The embodiment of this practice, Nástio does not operate as—nor does he bill himself as—an isolated genius. His work lies in the tension between his individual mind and its constant interaction with people, thoughts, and media.
“My material is perspective…”
Nástio frequently reaffirms that though his work stems from personal thoughts, it is not didactic. He wants to share what he thinks by addressing the singular viewer, or “whoever will give 5 minutes.”[19] He explains that God created him as an individual, so he sees as an individual and acts in a particular way and speaks in a unique voice: “I will only be different if I’m 100% me.”[20] Therefore the art he crafts is for individuals—they may be a tropa, or collective, of individuals, but the distinct nature of each member remains intact. “My material is perspective that motivates educated individual choice. It is generated through interaction; both human and technically speaking.”[21] The substance of his artwork is a profuse overflowing of his self, a self which is both divinely unique and constantly shaped through collision with other independent entities. In this seeming contradiction, the medium for his message and the inspiration behind it are both rooted in a lived personal perspective that responds to others. This phenomenon can be thought of as a perpetual collaboration, where the artist connects with different cultural operators and every experience is simultaneously a new creation in itself and the impetus for new artwork.
Figures 5 Nástio Mosquito and Megumi Matsubara, Tuning In To Africa, 2013. Live Performance, Courtesy Nástio Mosquito © and Megumi Matsubara ©
Figure 6. Nástio Mosquito and Megumi Matsubara, Tuning In To Africa, 2013. Live Performance, Courtesy Nástio Mosquito © and Megumi Matsubara ©
This practice is typified by a performance project from May 2013 where he and Morocco-based Japanese artist Megumi Matsubara created a light installation and series of performances based on their process of getting to know one another (Figures 5, 6). The project began with Matsubara’s online call, seeking a fellow Africa-based artist who works with sound and space. She sought a “total[ly] new encounter; random twin shooting stars, starting from two individuals who barely know each other to develop a project together for about six months…”[22] After their initial connection via email in January 2013, Nástio and Matsubara catalogued their exchanges, exploring step-by-step how humans make connections. Keeping personal journals and blogs, they archived the moments when they met on Skype, developed a rapport, and planned their multi-sensorial exhibition that would take place in Japan. Nástio summarizes the confusion, joy, and anxiety of developing a new connection with another individual as the embodiment of potential. “If two souls keep exchanging ideas and thoughts with each other, won’t they turn into reality someday?”[23] The fruition of this dialogue was not only the series of performances where the artists corporeally met each other in this exhibition space, but also the individual impact that resulted from sharing a season of life with another person. This is continuously mirrored in Nástio’s collaborative art practice. His work is always about something that moves him, but it is clear that what is moving him is colored, packaged, and framed by the presence of others in that system. Antonia Marten similarly notes, “the dividing line between Mosquito as a person and his work… turns out to be confusingly permeable.”[24]
I propose that one underpinning characteristic that distinguishes Nástio from other contemporary artists on the continent—though recent interviews indicate that he has joined the ranks of artists in the Diaspora[25]— is the persistent role of collaboration across all genres of production. In the majority of his works, performed or plastic, we see dialogue, exchange, tension between the mind of Nástio and his collaborators. He is an individual who maintains the distinctness of his self—his own mark—even if the final product is attributed to multiple voices. Nástio’s artistic career is a sort of anomaly for not only the frequency of collaborative projects, but also for the internationalism among these creative partnerships. His work is an exchange that mirrors the interconnectivity of our twenty-first century networks. Exploring the internet as an experimental platform for his music videos or recorded performances, his work is accessible, allowing the viewers to be physically estranged, yet share a common experience.
Nástio’s working method and his exhibition style are total rejections of the market’s tendency to pigeonhole artists from Africa as representatives of their birth nation. His works deny a unifying national identity, instead subverting the stereotypes of an impoverished, illiterate Africa. He promotes the story of one who navigates life as an individual within an expansive world. When asked if he feels “uncomfortable” anywhere or “at home” in Luanda, he merely responds with uncertainty: “I think a part of what moves me is wanting to belong to a community…still working at it…”[26] The subject matter of his work is not concerned with ‘non-Western’ preoccupations since Nástio does not acknowledge such delineations. He, and the artists with whom he collaborates, do not claim ownership to a single, universal narrative, nor will they be relegated to a defined subculture. Rather, history is read as the composition of infinite individual narratives and each of us is a contributor.
Alternatively stated, one might read his works as negotiating the line between the mind of the individual and the memory of the community—each constantly communicating with and affecting the other, and the product of which is the most natural form of collaboration. This is where My African Mind is situated. With My African Mind, we observe the power of collective memory. Through the use of digital technology, Nástio breathed life into the stale pages of an archive, demonstrating the lingering scars that these encounters have left on the face of present-day Africa. Even Nástio’s business, Dzzzz, has a global scope and the cutting-edge technology cannot be limited to a metropolitan center any longer as his audience consists of the individual—whether she is here, there, or elsewhere. If collaboration is defined as one or more people shaping the final form of a project, then not only is his practice supported by the pooling of creative energies, but the collaboration—or exchange between people—clearly influences the content of his work. His work is a response, a counter-thought, a co-thought.
Figure 7. BOFA DA CARA, My European Mind, 2013, video, 7’45’’, Courtesy Bofa Da Cara ©
Among his recent projects, Nástio teamed up again with Pere Ortin as Bofa da Cara in order to create a commissioned piece for the In Search of Europe exhibition project (2013) at Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. This piece, entitled My European Mind, employs the duo’s penchant for irreverent irony (Figure 7). Nástio plays Mr. S. Bock, a lecturer who addresses the dire situation of Europe’s growing irrelevance. Along with Columbian artist Carlos Motta, Nástio was named winner of the 2014 Future Generation Art Prize, a prestigious competition—with a $100,000 award—sponsored by the PinchukArtCentre in Kiev. Coupled with the artist’s first solo show in Europe, Daily Lovemaking (Figure 8) hosted by the Ikon Gallery (2015), and its corollary independent exhibition in the 2015 Venice Biennale, Western media began to widely apply the moniker “future star of the art world” to Nástio as they presumptuously called his Birmingham show “a great beginning” to his career.[27] But didn’t his career begin with the Luanda Triennial in 2006, or inclusion in the African Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2007? Or was his art world popularity based on the review of My African Mind from São Paolo in 2010? Nástio probably doesn’t care how critics label him or where art historians would situate him in a chronology of contemporary art practice. He quipped, “If I am indeed all those things that people are writing, then help me do shit better structurally speaking. Don’t just compliment me; fucking give me money to work.”[28]
Figure 8. Nástio Mosquito in collaboration with Vic Pereiró, Fuck Africa (Remix), 2015. Video, 3’09”, Courtesy Nástio Mosquito ©; Exhibition view Daily Lovemaking (2015), IKON Gallery, Birmingham; Photo by Stuart Whipps ©
As a representative of the generation of artists who grew up in the new millennium, Nástio Mosquito serves as a unique model for an artist from the African continent who exhibits widely at global venues, and with so many international partners. The majority of his projects are intimate—a collaboration with one other artist or an exhibition with a few, select works intended to engage each visitor. The suite of Nástio’s career will illuminate for us if his model—this journey of the individual, the one among many, navigating an increasingly interconnected, technocentric world—resonates with other young artists and audiences, African or otherwise.
Postscript
Since this article was accepted for publication in June 2015, Nástio has maintained a trend towards increased visibility for his projects. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, hosted his first solo exhibition in the United States, Projects 104: Nástio Mosquito. Running from September 23-October 30, 2016, the sprawling work Respectable Thief consisted of a live performance, a video projection, and “interventions into the digital display monitors in the Museum lobbies, the audio tour for kids, and the Museum’s social media outlets.”[29] Shortly thereafter, Nástio was named as one of seven finalists for Artes Mundi, a prestigious arts organization that “identifies, recognises and supports contemporary visual artists who engage with the human condition, social reality and lived experience.”[30] This article has been only summarily revised since its initial submission. The postscript only serves to recognize two recent highlights in the trajectory of Nástio’s career, but does not consider the evolution of his practice to determine the persistence of collaboration.
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Missla Libsekal, “The Currency of Nástio Mosquito,” AnotherAfrica, 25 May 2015. Accessed 26 May 2015. http://www.anotherafrica.net/art-culture/the-currency-of-nastio-mosquito ↩
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“Inspiration is a bitchy muse: an Interview with Angolan Artist Nástio Mosquito,” Contemporary And, 2014. Accessed 3 February 2015. http://www.contemporaryand.com/blog/magazines/music-is-a-bitchy-muse-an-interview-with-angolan-artist-nastio-mosquito/ ↩
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Nástio Mosqutio, Project Proposal, Visible, accessed 1 May 2013. http://www.visibleproject.org/projects/Nastio_Mosquito.php ↩
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Inês Thomas Almeida, “A Tropa do Indivíduo: Nástio Mosquito e os Ghostbusters,” Berlinda, 18 September 2011. http://www.berlinda.org/BERLINDA.ORG/Artes_Visuais/Eintrage/2011/9/18_A_Tropa_do_Individuo__Nastio_Mosquito_e_os_Ghostbusters.html ↩
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Jens Hoffmann, “Review of the 29th São Paulo Biennial,” Frieze, no. 136 (Jan-Feb 2011). ↩
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Bofa da Cara, artist entry on lowave, accessed 18 April 2013. http://www.lowave.com/en/artists/129-bofa-da-cara-en ↩
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Francesca Bayre with Bofa da Cara. “Rebranding what? Mimesis and mirrors against the single story,” 2013. Unpublished, courtesy of Pere Ortin: 6. ↩
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Nadine Siegert, Ghostbusters I: Nightmare to Memory, Savvy Contemporary Berlin and IWALEWA-Haus Bayreuth, 2011: 23. ↩
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Bofa da Cara, artist entry on lowave. ↩
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Bofa da Cara: Nástio vs. Pere (Do not believe what you read even though our mums are proud), ISOE⸮, 2013: 144. ↩
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Bayre, “Rebranding what?” 2013: 6. ↩
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Ibid. ↩
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Ikon Gallery, exhibition guide for Nástio Mosquito’s Nástia Answers Gabi, February 13-April 21, 2013: 9. ↩
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Allison Swank, “Nástio Mosquito’s No Bullsh*t Approach,” Okayafrica, 1 February 2012. Accessed 1 May 2013. http://www.okayafrica.com/stories/interview-nastio-mosquitos-no-bullsht-approach/ ↩
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Elvira Dyangani Ose, “Across the Board: Otobong Nkanga, Nástio Mosquito,” Atlántica Internacional, no. 53 (Spring/Summer 2013): 142–149. ↩
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dzzzz ARTWORK, “Nástio Mosquito at the Festival Metro54/Amsterdam,” 5 September 2012. http://issuu.com/dzzzz/docs/press_release_metro_54_eng ↩
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Bofa da Cara: Nástio vs. Pere, ISOE⸮, 2013: 144. ↩
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Ibid.: 9. ↩
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Ibid. ↩
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Former West, Mosquito Interview with Maria Hlavajova and Gwen Parry, June/July 2012. http://vimeo.com/69541346 ↩
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Siegert, Ghostbusters I, 2011: 17. ↩
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Satoko Shibahara, Website for installation by Megumi Matsubara and Nástio Mosquito in conjunction with “Sound/Art - Tuning in to Africa” at the Yokohama City Creative Centre, running 14 May 2013 to 20 May 2013, 2013. Accessed 20 May 2013. http://saa.yafjp.org/installation.html ↩
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Ibid. ↩
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Antonia Marten, “Performing Identities in the Arena of the Global Art World: Nástio Mosquito,” The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds after 1989, ed. Hans Belting: 297. ↩
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Recent interviews, including Missla Libsekal, “The Currency of Nástio Mosquito,” AnotherAfrica, 25 May 2015; and Mark Brown, “A great beginning: Angolan artist Nástio Mosquito’s show in Birmingham,” The Guardian, 4 February 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/04/great-beginning-angolan-artist-nastio-mosquito-show-ikon-birmingham, cite Mosquito as an Angolan-born, (Ghent) Belgium-based artist. ↩
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Nástio Mosquito, “Nástio Mosquito Answers Bartholomew Ryan,” 9 Artists, Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2013: 100–115. ↩
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Mark Brown, “A great beginning: Angolan artist Nástio Mosquito’s show in Birmingham,” The Guardian, 4 February 2015. ↩
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Missla Libsekal, “The Currency of Nástio Mosquito,” AnotherAfrica, 2015. ↩
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Museum of Modern Art, “Projects 104: Nástio Mosquito,” accessed 1 October 2017. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2724 ↩
May 2020. Vol nº1