LONDON.- Everard Read London is presenting the London debut exhibition of Johannesburg-based multi-disciplinary artist, Teresa Kutala Firmino. Rich in symbolism, Firmino’s vivid paintings explore complex issues of war, colonialism and cultural heritage, as well as identity and gender violence. What does it mean to be a young black woman in the 21st century in an environment which is institutionally brutal?

The act of making work is cathartic for Kutala Firmino. She believes “we heal by retelling our stories” and undertakes to tell “African narratives from an African perspective, as honestly as possible.” Kutala Firmino’s stories begin in her native Pomfret, a border province in North West South Africa, largely comprised of former 32 Battalion soldiers and their families, many of whom settled there after the end of the South African Border War.

Colonial rule induced many African people to cling to one another in a common cause to create free and independent countries – only to find that hard won freedom often brought with it new trauma, as once close communities turned against each other in a raw struggle for power.




Both the women and men in the Pomfret experienced these traumas – but it was the women who were subjected to the greatest abuse and Kutala Firmino’s work is a testimony to the rape and torture they endured. Those who survived found that they could not even count on their neighbours or family for support because society had normalised and effectively sanctioned the abuse they had suffered.

Kutala Firmino looks at how, despite the trauma they experienced, many of these women had to continue living with their abusers. The artist interrogates what it is about the black female body and mind which, despite trauma, continues to thrive. Is she truly living, or is she in constant melancholy as she exists in the aftermath of colonialism, civil war and betrayal? Is negotiating trauma realising that your abuser is possibly part of a bigger of cycle of abuse?

Kutala Firmino is acutely sensitive to the fact that the history of the Pomfret population is recent, “so people who were affected are still alive. Some of these stories were hidden for a reason.” She instead interprets the stories as fairy tales, thereby transforming the narratives into something elevated and universal. In her paintings, Kutala Firmino creates a series of staged tableaux in which female forms, often with faces resembling or hidden behind African masks, are depicted as characters on a stage. Firmino re-enacts their stories by imagining alternate realities that challenge the accepted version of historical events.

Masks are recurring motifs in Kutala Firmino’s work. Their function and power is activated by belief systems within African communities across the continent and the artist remains interested in how African objects and symbols have found their way into European contexts. Kutala Firmino talks of “an African deity opening its eyes in a museum in Belgium and realizing it is not home.” And she is interested in the dialogue between Africa and Europe regarding the restitution of objects that are sacred to a particular culture, thereby “reactivating these deities.”

Kutala Firmino’s work increasingly explores her profound interest in the black female body and seeks new narratives to reframe the notion of the black body as a site of trauma. With her paintings she imagines new territory for black women’s’ bodies – a place beyond the male gaze; beyond pain and suffering. Through her paintings Kutala Firmino imagines modern and millennial women reclaiming power over their own bodies.