Ângela Ferreira: Revolutionary Traces

7 December 2014 - 15 March 2015
Saturday 6 December 2014, 17 hrs: opening by senator Adri Duivesteijn (in the 1980s alderman of public housing in The Hague) + performance (17.30 hrs) | Preceded at 16 hrs by: lecture Nelson Mota (Architect and Assistant Professor at TU Delft) entitled: The Architect and the Grassroots: Álvaro Siza and the SAAL Process in Post-revolutionary Portugal

Location: Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Open: Wednesday to Sunday, 12-17 hrs
Exhibition guide: download pdf

Stroom School: Ângela Ferreira
The side program around this exhibition consist of a number of events like a workshop, several lectures and a film screening;

Thursday 29 January 2015, 16-18 hrs
Public Domain as strategy, Simon Franke (Trancity)
In February 2015, Trancity will present a publication on public space in the Schilderswijk. Their research focused on public space as the place where the private, the collective and the public interconnect, where joint initiatives take form. Simon Franke will discuss the use of public domain as a strategy, and will look into aspects of property and ownership, responsibility and appropriation by people in the public domain, with the Schilderswijk as a starting point.

Thursday 12 February 2015, 13-18 hrs
Patterns of inhabitation at the Schilderswijk, Nelson Mota
Nelson Mota recently published his dissertation An Archeology of the Ordinary. Rethinking the Architecture of Dwelling from CIAM to Siza. In his workshop he will look into design strategies in architecture that can accommodate growth and change over time. How can you identify elements of appropriation of resistance of residents to their housing buildings? Mota will seek active participation of the participants in looking for these elements in de Schilderwijk and will address the way that architects can think about this change and growth in the design process.

Thursday 19 February 2015, 20-22 hrs
Art, architecture & politics, Ângela Ferreira & Jürgen Bock
‘Buildings can be read as political texts and that is what I try to do'. This sentence is a starting point for a conversation between Ângela Ferreira, Jürgen Bock (curator and director Maumaus in Lisbon) and the audience. Ângela and Jürgen have been working together several times, amongst others for the Venice Biennale, where they developed Maison Tropicale. The conversation focusses on the relation and the difference between art and architecture, the realisation of (architectural) exhibitions and the understanding of culture and politics through the lens of architecture. The film Maison Tropicale by Manthia Diawara will be shown after the conversation.

Wednesday 4 March 2015, 20-22 hrs
Social housing after Siza, Jeroen Geurst (Geurst & Schulze architecten)
In The Hague the figure of Âlvaro Siza marks the start of a revolution in social housing and urban renewal. For the office of Geurst & Schulze the collaboration with Siza in the Schilderswijk was of great importance. Jeroen Geurst will reflect on these times, and  will compare them to the current state of social housing. The other guests this evening are: Endry van Velzen (De Nijl Architecten) and Olof van de Wal (Leef de stad).

'Buildings can be read as political texts and that is what I try to do.'
- Ângela Ferreira, 2014

Two new sculptures by the Portuguese/South African artist Ângela Ferreira link the work of architect Álvaro Siza Viera in the Schilderswijk (The Hague '85-'93) with Bairro de Bouça (Porto, '73-‘77). Both housing projects were realized under revolutionary circumstances.

The work of Ângela Ferreira focuses on buildings and the meaning they have in different time frames, on different locations, for different people. From this view point she looked at the work of Álvaro Siza Vieira in the Schilderswijk in The Hague. In the 1980s Siza was invited to The Hague by Adri Duivesteijn, at that time alderman for housing, as part of the campaign 'Urban renewal as cultural activity'. Duivesteijn first came into contact with the architect's work when he visited Porto where Siza, as a member of the group SAAL (Serviço Ambulatório de Apoio Local - Local Ambulatory Support Service, 1974-1976) had realized a number of social housing projects together with the inhabitants. Duivesteijn was looking for an unconventional and visionary architect, capable of realizing meaningful and high-quality housing projects based on the existing cultures and the specific demands of local inhabitants.

Revolutionary Traces focuses on this extraordinary period in the history of social housing and asks questions about the role of culture in urban renewal, the involvement of visionary administrators and the call of the government for participation by the inhabitants.

In addition to the new sculptures the exhibition features documents, photographs, videos and drawings illustrating both Ferreira's way of thinking and the way Siza looked at The Hague. Also included in the show is the evocative film 'Houses for the People', a film project on SAAL (2010) by Catarina Alves Costa (daughter of Alexandre Alves Costa, one of the prominent members of SAAL) showing the citizens of Porto taking to the streets in order to demand better housing.

Ângela Ferreira was born in 1958 in Maputo, Mozambique. She grew up in South Africa and obtained her MFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. She represented Portugal at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, continuing her investigations into the ways in which European modernism adapted or failed to adapt to the realities of the African continent by tracing the history of Jean Prouvé's Maison Tropicale. In June 2012 Ângela Ferreira gave a lecture at Stroom Den Haag as part of the ongoing series The Knight's Move. This presentation led to the inviation for this solo exhibition at Stroom Den Haag.

Parallel to the presentation at Stroom the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto hosts the exhibition The SAAL Process: Architecture and Participation 1974-1976.

Catalogue Ângela Ferreira Revolutionary Traces
The exhibition is accompanied by a small catalogue linking the historical projects in Porto and the Schilderswijk.

Stroom School side program
In addition there is an indepth side program exploring the theme of housing and urban renewal as a cultural activity.

Revolutionary Traces is made possible in part by the Creative Industries Fund NL and Mondriaan Fund.

Special thanks to:
Catarina Alves Costa, Joop Bolster, Frans den Breejen, Fred van der Burg, Adri Duivesteijn, Jeroen Geurst, Nelson Mota, Leo Oorschot, Delfim Sardo, Robin van de Ven.
Performance: Joost Dekker
Film of the performance: Gerard Holthuis