MyAngola

Toia Neuparth (Maria Antónia Neuparth Vieira Alexandre)

◊ Born in Angola on November 3rd, in the Huíla plateau. It was there that she began her artistic journey at an early age through the decorative arts, taking several courses in her hometown.

◊ She began as a self-taught painter and by 1990, worked in Lita Teixeira’s art studio in Lisbon, where she developed oil techniques over a 3-year course.

◊ The year of 1996 marked a passage by the Society of Beautiful Arts in the painting course where she developed new techniques; which allowed her to hasten her style and rigidity.

Twelve years passed within a career in which she specialized as a portrait painter, using her faith and dedication to oil paintings in appealing through realism. Her passionate dedication to the human figure formed from her own recollections. Overall, she felt that it was necessary to transpose the scenic landscapes of Africa, predominantly reflecting on the sweltering late afternoons and the relative closeness of water (such as bays and beaches).

Challenges have arisen that forced her to go above and beyond by portraying the passion and involvement between male and female experiences. Through symbolism of the human carnal figure, she has portrayed still-life paintings in which the presence of a plum seems to transmit sensuality and femininity that makes the viewer really think of its meaning.
AFRIKADANDO, which we will traverse through vision, will provide us with the meeting of populations that have been inserted in the physical space of southwest Angola, northern Mozambique, and Guinea. It will constitute itself as traditional mosaics and of deep cultural roots that situate themselves within History’s long duration. These Bantos population lodgers that are organized in complex “ethnic” nomenclatures find their springs of subsistence and of wealth in agriculture and pastures. They maintain the ability to widen their fan of resources here and there through prideful activities such as hunting and fishing.
Africa and Africans have exercised their inexplicable and irresistible fascination in awaking travelers, merchants, missionaries, and explorers. In her wandering, she has experienced the most unforeseeable emotions and restlessness, the most pertinent interrogations, and the most justified reactions. But the official interest of the govern of Portugal’s colonial domination demonstrates the “uses and customs” of these people that are barely aimed at objectives of colonial domination.
By that, the characterization and evaluation that the roster of officials and administrative members of the staff produced about the African population were disseminated by the vast Portuguese colonial territory. They guided themselves with incorrect, discriminatory, and misconstrued interpretations by agreeing with the skin color’s stigma associated to the semi-nudity constituted at once like differentiating racial markings between the uncivilized and the civilized. They wrote reports and created compilations, produced monographs and works that included ethnological and anthropological photographs. However, in the entire literary production, the iconography that emphasizes the distinctive line of the “heathen” black individual in his multifaceted wildness is tinged by natural and exotic symbols. It is not because of this that the innocent circulation between the conquered colonies and the metropolis have appeared in hundreds of photographs and have been reproduced onto illustrated postcards in the latter course of the twentieth century.
Upon witnessing the existence of those distant regions that were occupied with tempting exotic populations, they were basically aimed at stimulating the desire from the consumption of a product and creating an appeal for an Africa that was urgently colonized. The illustrated postcard certainly constitutes itself as a support of publicity and of transmission of colonial ideology.
However, what Toia reveals through the portrait is her pictorial object: the dimension of the alterations present in African populations. Through her lived and felt experiences, she brings us an aesthetic and ritual conception that emanates from dressing and adorning bodies. From her paintings which pass through many distinct phases, she has crossed over to uncover the sense of life. Rituals from her childhood, puberty, marriage, and different social justifications maintain a continuous process of cultural identity. It is all a chromatic exhibit of the clothing and singularity of historical hairstyles.
Adorned objects excel from the hair with different colored beads and braids of fibrous material. Bracelets made of reed and rings carved from brass, iron, and copper cover the arms and legs. A diversity of necklaces surround the neck: necklaces of interlaced beads or with encrusted beads of leather, necklaces made of vegetable fibers, and even small or large necklaces made of wood decorated with geometric designs. Pendants can be counted with coins made of iron and brass. Amulets contain shells or conches and are laced with small slices of ostrich eggs.
At the waist, there lies a complex superimposition of cloths and streaks of threaded beads with geometric designs. Decorative belts or strips of leather containing carvings or drawings made from thin copper wire also hang from the waist.
The pictorial registers with how Toia has made us feel astonished and impassioned, are illustrations of cultural microcosms. They consecrate and consubstantiate in the painting of cultural diversity and multiplicity from the universe of which we pertain to. It is this present authenticity that should constitute for all of us a factor of understanding and indispensable enrichments in the context of a world with permanent change.
AFRIKADANDO, which we will traverse through vision, will provide us with the meeting of populations that have been inserted in the physical space of southwest Angola, northern Mozambique, and Guinea. It will constitute itself as traditional mosaics and of deep cultural roots that situate themselves within History’s long duration. These Bantos population lodgers that are organized in complex “ethnic” nomenclatures find their springs of subsistence and of wealth in agriculture and pastures. They maintain the ability to widen their fan of resources here and there through prideful activities such as hunting and fishing.
Africa and Africans have exercised their inexplicable and irresistible fascination in awaking travelers, merchants, missionaries, and explorers. In her wandering, she has experienced the most unforeseeable emotions and restlessness, the most pertinent interrogations, and the most justified reactions. But the official interest of the govern of Portugal’s colonial domination demonstrates the “uses and customs” of these people that are barely aimed at objectives of colonial domination.
By that, the characterization and evaluation that the roster of officials and administrative members of the staff produced about the African population were disseminated by the vast Portuguese colonial territory. They guided themselves with incorrect, discriminatory, and misconstrued interpretations by agreeing with the skin color’s stigma associated to the semi-nudity constituted at once like differentiating racial markings between the uncivilized and the civilized. They wrote reports and created compilations, produced monographs and works that included ethnological and anthropological photographs. However, in the entire literary production, the iconography that emphasizes the distinctive line of the “heathen” black individual in his multifaceted wildness is tinged by natural and exotic symbols. It is not because of this that the innocent circulation between the conquered colonies and the metropolis have appeared in hundreds of photographs and have been reproduced onto illustrated postcards in the latter course of the twentieth century.
Upon witnessing the existence of those distant regions that were occupied with tempting exotic populations, they were basically aimed at stimulating the desire from the consumption of a product and creating an appeal for an Africa that was urgently colonized. The illustrated postcard certainly constitutes itself as a support of publicity and of transmission of colonial ideology.
However, what Toia reveals through the portrait is her pictorial object: the dimension of the alterations present in African populations. Through her lived and felt experiences, she brings us an aesthetic and ritual conception that emanates from dressing and adorning bodies. From her paintings which pass through many distinct phases, she has crossed over to uncover the sense of life. Rituals from her childhood, puberty, marriage, and different social justifications maintain a continuous process of cultural identity. It is all a chromatic exhibit of the clothing and singularity of historical hairstyles.
Adorned objects excel from the hair with different colored beads and braids of fibrous material. Bracelets made of reed and rings carved from brass, iron, and copper cover the arms and legs. A diversity of necklaces surround the neck: necklaces of interlaced beads or with encrusted beads of leather, necklaces made of vegetable fibers, and even small or large necklaces made of wood decorated with geometric designs. Pendants can be counted with coins made of iron and brass. Amulets contain shells or conches and are laced with small slices of ostrich eggs.
At the waist, there lies a complex superimposition of cloths and streaks of threaded beads with geometric designs. Decorative belts or strips of leather containing carvings or drawings made from thin copper wire also hang from the waist.
The pictorial registers with how Toia has made us feel astonished and impassioned, are illustrations of cultural microcosms. They consecrate and consubstantiate in the painting of cultural diversity and multiplicity from the universe of which we pertain to. It is this present authenticity that should constitute for all of us a factor of understanding and indispensable enrichments in the context of a world with permanent change.
  Eunice Luis