LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- This spring, MoMA PS1 presents the first museum exhibition of artist Sandra Poulson (Angolan, b. 1995), including an installation of new assemblage works. On view April 24 through October 6, 2025, Este quarto parece uma República! [This Bedroom Looks Like a Republic!] features sculptures made from garments and appropriated furniture. Poulson’s practice takes an archaeological approach to Angolan symbols, codes, and cultural objects to untangle histories, oral traditions, and geopolitics. Seen together, her works shed new light on the transnational circulation of images and material culture in the wake of the Angolan Civil War.
Poulson’s works draw on daily life and customs in her hometown Luanda, examining how intimate spaces become arenas for political consciousness. Her work challenges the manners in which ideological symbols circulate anew, detached from their original social and historical contexts once commodified. A wooden headboard inscribed with the European Union logo, Cabinda Dreams (2024) recalls the dissonance of seeing Cabinda farmers wearing a European Union polo shirt. Taking the form of a wooden dresser, Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (2024) underscores the fashioning of religious propaganda into homes. For these sculptures, Poulson sourced vintage Dutch furniture fabricated from tropical wood from territories such as Angola—as well as “American-style” furniture fabricated in China from veneered chipboard—reflecting on the abstraction of nation-building within the domestic sphere. Investigating power relations and the fluidity of value codes, Poulson’s assemblage brings together fragmented objects that grapple with writings by historian William Pietz on the fetishization of ideologies, in which ideologies become abstracted from their material realities until activated again in service of those in power.
Sandra Poulson lives and works between Luanda, London, and Amsterdam, where she is currently a resident at The Rijksakademie. Poulson has completed large-scale commissions for various institutions including the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2024) selected as part of Biennale College Art (2024); The Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023; Bold Tendencies, London (2023); and the British Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2023). She graduated with an MA in Fashion from the Royal College of Art, London, and a BA in Fashion Print from Central Saint Martins, London.
The exhibition is organized by Elena Ketelsen González, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1.
