Artists

Cassi Namoda

Press release

The works in The Equator’s Forfeit, Cassi Namoda’s second exhibition with the gallery, were painted in two locations, Europe and America. Informed by Namoda’s frequent and long visits to her country of birth, Mozambique, the works are rooted in personal experience, while reflecting broader historical and contemporary truths. Namoda’s dream-like paintings unfurl across time, continents, traditions and cultures, depicting pictures of enchantment and disenchantment, as well as of loss and restitution, in the Equatorial regions.

The title of the exhibition connects one of the most symbolic lines in the world, the notional division between the northern and southern hemispheres, to the idea of a forfeit: a penalty for wrongdoing; a price that has to be paid. It is a metaphorical allusion to the line no longer holding, and to the inescapable fact that patterns are changing. A shift set in motion by the repercussions of colonialism but exacerbated by the most urgent danger facing the global south today: climate change. Coastal cities, such as the Mozambican capital, Maputo, are especially vulnerable. The painting Mangito’s Way, which depicts a young boy repairing a traditional straw roof, reflects this theme. It is against this backdrop that the ten new paintings in The Equator’s Forfeit unfold.