ART-TRIBUTE:Nástio Mosquito-T.T.T. Template Temples of Tenacity

Multimedia Angolan artist, Nástio Mosquito, is known for his performances, videos, music, and poetry that show an intense commitment to the open-ended potential of language. The artist uses a range of monikers including Nastiá, Saco, Cucumber Slice, and Zura Zuara. Easily misread as a kind of world-weariness, it is the extraordinary expression of an urgent desire to engage with reality at all levels.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Fondazione Prada Archive

His voice and his body, often at the center of his multimedia propositions, are, on the occasion of his project at Fondazione Prada, powerfully absent. This is a clear aesthetic twist in the work of an artist that has reached a solid mature stage in his career. “T.T.T.-Template Temples of Tenacity” represents Mosquito’s immersion in a collective idea of total art, inviting collaborators and audience to take part in a unique sensorial experience. The project comprises three distinctiveelements for which Mosquito has collaborated with a group of international artists. “WEorNOT (Nastivicious’ Temple #1)” (2016) is a site-specific installation, conceived and realized by Nastivicious (the collective that Mosquito and Vic Pereiró founded in 2008) in collaboration with illustrator Ada Diez. A satirical reflection on the contemporary social and political panorama, the installation encourages the viewers to challenge their own convictions and to immerse themselves in a reflective experience. Mosquito has collaborated with musician Dijf Sanders and choir The Golden Guys for the production of “I MAKE LOVE TO YOU. YOU MAKE LOVE TO ME. LET LOVE HAVE SEX WITH THE BOTH OF US. (PART 1- THE GREGORIAN GOSPEL VOMIT)” (2016). This performative experience is held in the open courtyard of Fondazione Prada and involves two choirs, each consisting of 15 singers, that approach one another creating a physical and sound fusion. Mosquito will also present “SYNCHRONICITY IS MY BITCH: THE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE” (2016), to be hosted in September at Fondazione Prada. Perhaps his most personal work since “Nástia’s Manifesto” (2008), it is an audiovisual work assembling the artist’s latest album, “Gatuno, Eimigrante & Pai de Família” (2016), with a number of visual and filmic references extracted from a series of African films, documentaries and forms of vernacular television from the past twenty years. The project draws inspiration from the multiple imaginaries around love (in all its possible meanings) as absorbed by the artist, who calls himself “a child of the Cold War”, referencing his teenage years growing in the mist of Angola’s Civil War.

Info: Fondazione Prada, Largo Isarco 2, Milan, Duration: 7/7-25/9/16, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Thu 10:00-20:00, Fri-Sun 10:00-21:00, www.fondazioneprada.org