Nástio Mosquito and Nadia Naveau in Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens
On October 13th, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens is opening two solo exhibitions by contemporary artists that have been making a mark in recent years. Multimedia and performance artist Nástio Mosquito is presenting his first Belgian solo exhibition disguised as the fictional character A.L. Moore, while sculptor Nadia Naveau is combining new and reimagined works in an evocative whole.
Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens
NÁSTIO MOSQUITO: Moore’s Bad & Better Mundi
NADIA NAVEAU: Let’s Play It By Ear
13 October 2019 – 12 January 2020
Museumlaan 14, 9831 Deurle
Nástio Mosquito
The Angolian artist Nástio Mosquito uses multimedia, performance and spoken word to expose global and African political topics. Mosquito often places himself at the centre of his practice, but the real Nástio Mosquito is never revealed. His fictional personae tend to portray devious observations about human follies manifest in modern life.
Nástio Mosquito has performed and exhibited in leading international institutions and museums such as the MoMA in New York, the Fondation Cartier in Paris and the Venice Biennale, but this is his first solo exhibition in Belgium. The exhibition in museum Dhondt-Dhaenens immerses the visitor in the universe of the fictional leader A.L. Moore, president of (also fictional) Botrovia. A.L. Moore made his major breakthrough following the sale of 16 containers of fake leather wallets that were produced in China. Currently, he has investments in Hollywood, oil drilling, and reportedly a few brothels in Brazil. The figure is frequently seen singing to himself in the toilet and discussing cynical political strategies over the phone. The character was created in 2016 and has since lived on in all kinds of performances, videos and installations. With Moore's Bad & Better Mundi, the MDD is gathering the illustrious world of A.L. Moore for the first time into a substantial total work of art.
In 2016, the year he created the character A.L. Moore, Mosquito was nominated for Artes Mundi 7, the most important art prize in the UK. This prize is awarded to artists whose work engages with the human condition, social reality and lived experiences; subjects that form the common thread in Mosquito’s work. He confronts his audience in a very direct yet playful way with themes such as consumerism and other symptoms of globalization.
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Nástio Mosquito has roots in broadcasting, working as a director and cameraman. He has performed in institutions such as Tate Modern and the Walker Art Center. In 2014, Mosquito was announced as the joint winner of the 3rd Future Generation Art Prize and was named one of the ten African artists to look forward to by The Guardian. He received wide attention in 2015 thanks to his exhibition Daily Lovemaking in IKON, Birmingham, a piece that was later exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale. In 2016 an exhibition followed at the MoMA in New York. He has also performed at Fondation Cartier, Paris; De Vooruit, Ghent and WIELS, Brussels, and officially opened the current Venice Biennale with a performance.
Nadia Naveau
Belgian artist Nadia Naveau (°1975, Bruges, lives and works in Antwerp) is primarily known for her figurative sculptures. The typically seductive and often surprising sculptures are the result of a balanced game of colour, shape, scale and various materials such as plaster, ceramics and polyester. For the exhibition at the museum Dhondt-Dhaenens Nadia Naveau is making a new installation in which diverse sculptures are brought together in a comprehensive scenography. New sculptures are combined with existing works that are reimagined and reworked in plaster, resulting in a new evocative work of art.
Naveau's sculptures are best described as three-dimensional collages and, because of their eclecticism, betray a certain post-modern twist. In this way a single image can evoke references to The Simpsons, classical antiquity, the Baroque or Mexican culture. Out of all these contexts, a strange, original iconography is born.
"It happens in the clay, as clay sets its own conditions. At a certain moment there is no longer a dispute with the 'thing' in creation. It shows itself in a brief moment of sudden understanding. The title of the exhibition refers to the light-hearted statement 'Let's play it by ear’.”
— Nadia Naveau.
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Nadia Naveau studied sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Antwerp. She lives and works in Antwerp and St-Bonnet-Tronçais. Her work has been exhibited at the Middelheim Museum, M HKA, (Beyond Baroque), in Florida and at the Stedelijk Museum ‘s-Hertogenbosch, among others. In 2007, her participation in Le Salon du Plaisir was part of the Provincial Prize for Visual Arts, Fabiolazaal, Antwerp. In 2018, her work was included in the Sanguine/Bloedrood, exhibition curated by Luc Tuymans at the M HKA and Prada Foundation in Milan.
