Carpintarias de São Lázaro

R. de São Lázaro 72, 1150-199 Lisboa

17 . 10 . 2025 → 09 . 11 . 2025

thursday - sunday → 12:00 pm – 06:00 pm

Artist

Jono Terry

Rhodesiana Africanus is a three-part exploration of identity, belonging and colonial legacy in the country of my birth, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). It is a fictional study of the white man in Africa told through three generations of my family story.

Each part, each chapter, weaves together the complex social, cultural and political landscape of my home, questioning my sense of attachment to it: Beneath the bougainvillea explores the story of my British grandparents in Rhodesia through the symbolism of a bougainvillea bush, a foreign species transported to the land to remind the colonisers of home, bringing colour to what was deemed a monotone landscape, and in doing so planting the seeds of my own African identity. It is about the deeply rich red soil of my home. It is about land. It is about how I come to call myself Zimbabwean.

Bougainvillea are prolifically visible throughout Zimbabwe, the pink and red hues taint my childhood memories of space, warmth and happiness, the trace of them lurk in photographs, on verges, gardens, schools, and a variety of public spaces, almost omnipresent. Pink skinned. Unnatural. Intertwined. Sometimes I see them as beautiful plants, sometimes I see them as a sprinkling of open wounds, the magenta flesh now glowing in the African sun.