Gonçalo Mabunda was born in Maputo, Mozambique in 1975, Mabunda started his work in the context of a project implemented in 1995, by the Christian Council of Mozambique.
Some 800.000 weapons have been collected since the Council launched this project, called « Transforming Guns into Hopes » after a civil war that lasted almost twenty years.
Mabunda uses Kalashnikovs, rockets, pistols, and shells. He makes thrones and masks out of these deactivated weapons.
The masks are based on traditional sub-saharan african masks, however, the original twist on the art form is by creating them out of weapons.
This unique to Mabunda. Mabunda's thrones mock how the traditional power rests on weapons.
Mabunda's art directly challenges the absurdity of war. Some of his work has a modernist style to it and some art critics have compared his work to that of Braque and Picasso.
In 2017, former US President Bill Clinton, commissioned the artist to create trophies for his philanthropic organisation « The Clinton Global Initiative ».
Michel Frère is an expressionist materialist painter born in Brussels in 1961.
He studied at the National School of Visual Arts in La Cambre in Brussels, focusing on painting, pastel, drawing, sculpture and photography.
He quotes his great references as Nicolas Poussin, James Ensor, and the landscapes of Gustave Courbet. But above all he drew his inspiration from the work of Eugene Leroy.
He has exhibit in Brussels, New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Los Angeles and Athens. In the 1990s, he spent time between Brussels and New York - Michel Frère died tragically, aged 38 in 1999.
From these thick, moving textures, without beginning or end, nature seems to arise to die. They constitute, at the meeting point of physics and metaphysics, of science and imagination, a synthesis and an overcoming of modern painting.
Danièle Gillemon.
José Bedia was born in 1959, in Havana in Cuba the city where he grew up and studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte.
He was a pioneer of the radical transformation of cuban art. His passion for the Native american indians complemented his anthropological studies on Afro-transatlantic cultures.
He studying in depth the faith, believes and religion of the « La Kongo Kingdom » (in which he was initiated in 1983).
He traveled to Angola as part of the International Cultural Brigades who supported the struggle of the Angolan-Cuban war against Namibia and South Africa.
This contact with the mother continent and the war increased his interest about the african roots of american culture.
This interest took him to visit countries such as Peru, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Rep, Puerto Rico, Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, and Tanzania.
After residing in Mexico he moved to Miami Florida, where he currently lives.
His work has been exhibited in Havana, Sao Paulo, the Venice and Beijing Biennales, where he received awards.
His works are in NYC at the MOMA, Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum and Guggenheim, in Washington DC at the Smithsonian Museum, The Colección Daros (Zurich), MEIAC, DA2, IVAM, CAAM (España), MOCA, MAM and PAMM in Miami.
