Alida Rodrigues was born in 1983, in Cabinda, Angola, graduating with a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, University of London, in 2007. Her mixed media collages are concerned with the changing nature of identity and memory, as well as the role and limits of the image in the process of history manipulation and culture sterilisation. Her work is part of a larger contemporary movement aiming at restructuring of the historiography of African countries.
Conceptual artist, Alida Rodrigues was born in 1983, in Cabinda, Angola, graduating with a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, University of London, in 2007. Part of a larger contemporary movement aiming at restructuring the historiography of African countries, Rodrigues’ work is concerned with the changing nature of identity and memory, and the role and limits of the image in the process of history manipulation and culture sterilisation. In particular, she investigates the historical position of postcards, which she has described as ‘a relic of the colonial period’ (West Harlem Art Fund). Rodrigues produces mixed media collages combining Victorian portraiture with botanical illustrations. She also uses photographs of African women, children and couples that date back to the mid-1800s and early 1900s in order to explore different visions of the history of her African origins. Rodrigues disrupts these images by applying flower cutouts and drawings over the heads of figures from found postcards, photographs and cabinet photos. Many of the images have a specific colonial reference, reflecting the European perceptions of indigenous people, as well as the power imbalance, exploitation and fetishism of the native people. Inspired by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird’s botanical book The Secret Life of Plants, Rodrigues mixes portraits with botanical illustrations of species not native to western Europe, altering the original narrative of the image and its associated histories. These botanical illustrations present the exoticism of the plants, acknowledging the distant lands from which they originated (for example Africa, South America and Asia), while also suggesting the lack of available photographic images showing people of different ethnic groups, which were mainly kept in museums or hidden away in storage. In her collages, the original sitters are absent but have acquired different characteristics through the inclusion of plants, becoming objects of beauty, ‘grotesque and strangely beautiful re-imaginings of the human form’, without any focus on their race (Poco a Poco). According to Rodrigues, their loss of identity also poses questions about the ‘‘sense of belonging’ or the sense of 'not belonging' that is so familiar to some of us, whether it be to your country of birth or your host country’ (ArtAfrica interview).
Rodrigues was inspired to create her first body of work when she was gifted a 19th century postcard by a friend, and then found a book, the Collins Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools, in a charity shop. She began thinking about putting the two elements together and experimenting with different media. She explained that ‘It wasn’t meant to be anything it was just a way of exploring in much the same way as that of the early nineteenth century European explorers who collected and documented the world around them’ (ArtAfrica interview). Rodrigues subsequently began collecting images, often sourced from house clearances, usually when an elderly relative died. Her process adds a layer of poignancy to old photographs, whose family histories are often lost but are now open to Rodrigues’ reinterpretation. Rodrigues’ works ultimately promote a reflection on the modern and contemporary status of the image, its proliferation and circulation, its powers and limits, as well as its anthropological dimension. Her work is deeply concerned with the ‘history of forgetting’, a practice which over the centuries has led to the cancellation of memory, the manipulation, or partial destruction of images and names.
Rodrigues held her first solo exhibition at the Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Norway, in 2014, followed by a number of London group shows, including Interchange Junctions, Howick Place (2014) and Mythopoeia, Tiwani Contemporary (2015). In 2014 she was artist in residence at INIVA (Institute of International Visual Arts), London, holding the exhibition Anthologia, which presented a selection of her collages inspired by botanical etchings and 19th century portraiture. In 2019 she participated in Stared in Relic 3, part of the multi-disciplinary ongoing project Relic Traveller: Phase 2, carried out by British-Ghanaian artist artist Larry Achiampong. Featuring performance, audio, moving image and prose, the project builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration. In 2021 Rodrigues was artist in residence at Pocoapoco, an arts and cultural organisation based in Oaxaca, Mexico, supporting the pivotal impact of creative work for individuals and communities. Rodrigues is also a member of the Photographic Collective’s advisory board, an online platform founded in 2020 which aspires to grant visibility to emerging artists, to research overlooked archives, and champion new talent. Her work is not currently represented in UK public collections.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Alida Rodrigues]
Publications related to [Alida Rodrigues] in the Ben Uri Library