African Artist Cristiano Mangovo Exposes Human Horrors, Offers Peaceful Alternative For All Living Creatures Through Complex Visual Narratives

A hybrid female and male figure with a scroll for a head that’s propped up by golden neck rings, extends its four arms outward as if to accept an embrace or an offering. The limbs are sinewy with oversized hands and a contorted foot, and pert, round breasts are accentuated by orange outlines on a yellow shirt. The primary figure holds ladders on each side for other distorted figures to climb in search of knowledge, while a briefcase in the lower right corner represents financial support necessary for human survival. The figure on the top right faces the viewer and dips its hand into a large bowl held up by the scroll which symbolizes knowledge and water, a vital source of life that can also be deadly.

The array of mostly blue and green flesh tones underscores the strangeness of the figures intertwined with the symbols. The complex composition is simultaneously ferocious and fragile, hinting at potential power and precarity of life.

Support (2023) is among 30 large-scale evocative visual narratives by Cristiano Mangovo on view at Chase Contemporary in New York’s SoHo through July 13 in a solo exhibition with the Angolan artist who arrived in New York months ago.

Born 1982 in Cabinda, Angola, Mangovo earned a degree in fine art from Académie des Beaux-Arts (ABA) in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and further trained in urban scenography, exploring the interconnections between spatial configurations and everyday scenarios, and performance. Growing up as a refugee in the DRC before returning to Angola in 2009, Mangovo has confronted fundamental questions about humanity in turmoil and chaos.

The Angolan Civil War began immediately after Angola became independent from Portugal in November 1975, and continued, with brief interludes of peace, until 2002, between two former anti-colonial guerrilla movements, the communist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the anti-communist National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

Mangovo is part of a new generation of socially-conscious artists who influence the evolution of contemporary art in Africa. His multi-media practice, spanning painting, sculptures, performance, and design, exposes the economic, political, environmental, and cultural damage caused by Europeans who destroyed the colonies, while celebrating local traditions and looking to a better future.

Mangovo’s energetic paintings are performative, as we imagine the curious figures emerging from the canvas, their bodies and expressions conveying dynamic movement and range of emotion.

At the June 15 opening, Mangovo fluidly crossed the boundaries of performance and visual art, writhing from under a blanket adorned with red and green flowers, his hands and feet slathered in paint. Moaning in agony, he slithered and shuddered, striving to be set free like the figures in his work.

We encounter a peaceful solution to conflict as distorted figures pour water into repurposed weapons to create hospitable environments for plants to flourish. The mint green background of No War, Just Water (2023) evokes serenity and a drum in the center keeps the beat for human harmony. Though the two nations have maintained reportedly cordial diplomatic relations since 1993, the U.S. was involved in Angola through its military alliance with Portugal and investment in Angolan oil. During the past decade, U.S. Special Operations forces have been involved in combat in at least 13 African nations, including DRC, according to retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who served at U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) from 2013 to 2015 and then headed Special Operations Command Africa until 2017.

We celebrate feminine strength and fertility as we engage with Tchikumbi (2023). The central figure is swaddled in polka dot fabric, only her face exposed. Other human figures surround her, offering gifts of wine, a gilded object, and a two-headed rooster in the upper left. The tchikumbi is a womanhood initiation rite for the Vili people, a Central African ethnic group, established in southwestern Gabon, Angola and the DRC. Nubile young women are adorned by their elders with bracelets and other jewelry and covered with a red wood powder mixed with palm oil, as family members dance and give the young woman a reprieve from chores as she prepares to accept a marriage offer.

The natural and human worlds further conflate in Motivators (2023), where a planter with eyes replaces the head of the central figure, as green leaves extend out to shelter the two figures on either side. Limbs are warped, faces disfigured, in a composition that’s discombobulated yet elegant. Both Angola and DRC face mounting environmental challenges, including deforestation, soil erosion, poor water quality, pollution from mining and oil production, poaching, which threatens wildlife populations, and the impacts of climate change. Mangovo presents an alternative to the devastation, where symbiosis exists between humans and plants.

For Mangovo, the body chronicles all physical and emotional marks endured during our lifetimes, and his figures express the agony of everyday life amid colossal strife from constant threats to humanity and nature and a desire to create a better future. There is hope imbued in his complex narratives, where all living creatures (humans, animals, and plants) can coexist and overcome human-made discord and calamity.