HELENA UAMBEMBE

Her practice is rooted in her family’s story of forced migration to South Africa following the Angolan civil war - a conflict that stemmed from the Cold War playing out on the African continent. Uambembe’s father was a soldier in the 32 Battalion, a unit in the South African Defence Force deployed to southern Angola. People who were coerced into SADF military service during apartheid South Africa’s long-term illegal occupation and border war with Angolan communist forces were later denied assistance and exiled from their home country.

. Translating to ‘take care of your poor luck’ the title refers to a saying in Lusophone communities during difficult times that Uambembe heard growing up. Through new drawings, paintings and a film Uambembe examines today’s increasingly conservative, militarised world.

The drawings stem from the artist’s observation of Europe’s influx of military recruitment, particularly posters and adverts targeting younger generations and drawing on language such as ‘brotherhood’. These are compared to her community of military refugees and the coercion and manipulation tactics used to get them to join the military to survive.

The canvas works draw on Uambembe’s background in printmaking. Using stencils and oil paint sticks on primed canvas to trace the abstracted, puppet-like figures, highlighting the loss of self-identity that occurs in the military. Here, the canvas is treated like a textile piece with hemmed edges. The colours red, blue and green symbolise luck and prosperity, an ironic association when thinking about war and its violent residue.

The third component is the film ‘The woman and the goldfish’ commissioned as part of the public programme for the British Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, ‘Unseen Guests’. The fictional story is inspired by her hometown Pomfret, South Africa. It was an asbestos mining town that was later ‘rehabilitated’ to house the soldiers of the 32 Battalion and their families. When the military was active in Pomfret they had placed a fountain made of stones in the center of the town. The fountain housed koi fish and always had flowing water while there was water scarcity for the people living in Pomfret. The work speaks to the experience of displacement and the limitation of resources.

The presentation also includes an installation of dog tags with phrases such as “every dog has its day” accompanied by flowers. This work is reminiscent of her exhibitions at Museum für Moderne Kunst and Kunsthalle Bremen in 2023 and 2024 respectively.

Helena Uambembe (b. 1994 in Pomfret, South Africa) is an artist of Angolan descent whose work is heavily influenced by her heritage and experiences. Her parents fled the civil war in Angola and her father was a soldier in the 32 Battalion of the South African Defence Force. Uambembe’s artistic practice explores themes of the 32 Military Battalion and her Angolan heritage.

She obtained her Btech in 2018 from Tshwane University of Technology in South Africa. Uambembe won the David Koloane Award and completed a two-month residency at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg. She has exhibited at Art Basel Statement where she was awarded the Baloise Art Prize in 2022. She had her first institutional solo show at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt in 2023. She is also one of the recipients of the 2024 Ars Viva Art Prize.

Uambembe has upcoming projects as part of the Freiburg Biennale and at Haus Der Kunst, München in June 2025.

Uambembe lives and works in Berlin.