Angolan Artworks Explore Colonial Legacies and Planetary Futures

Two contemporary art projects from Angola engage with twentieth-century utopian ideals and colonial histories. The exhibition Lion & Ox, featuring works by António Ole and Art Orienté objet, examines Angolan nature through colonial taxonomic frameworks. Meanwhile, Kiluanji Kia Henda's installation Icarus 13 presents a science fiction narrative about an Angolan space mission to the Sun, proposing a shift toward planetary imagination. Both works reference Agostinho Neto, the poet who became Angola's first Marxist-Leninist president. These pieces were created in recent years, with the article published on February 5, 2014, considering their implications for thinking the planetary from Angola. The content is available via MIT Press under a subscription-only model.