Euridice Zaituna Kala

Euridice Zaituna Kala graduated in Experimental Photography at the Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg, South Africa in 2012. Euridice Zaituna Kala is the winner of the research residencies with the Villa Albertine season 2022/2023 in New York and was also the winner of the Villa Vassilieff/ ADAGP Fellowship (2019/2020).  She has presented numerous performances including Sea(E)scapes: Séance d’écoute at the Jeu de Paume, Paris in 2022. Her work will also be included in the 5th edition of the Casablanca Biennale (2022-2023). She is also the founder and co-organizer of e.a.s.t. (Ephemeral Archival Station), a laboratory and platform for artistic research projects, established in 2017.

Project at Villa Medici: 

“What about the archives of the African presence in Rome?

During my residency in Rome, I will dive into the study of the archives of Bertina Lopes (1924-2012), a painter of Mozambican origin living in Rome and whose painting and life are the witness of a historical event of my childhood (the peace agreement between Frelimo and Renamo marking the end of the civil war in Mozambique – the Rome Agreement, 1992).

I will divide my time between his studio, his personal archives and his library in Rome. I wish to approach Bertina Lopes’ work by concentrating on the study of three paintings that the artist made in Rome, all of them in homage to deceased figures: Picasso (1881-1973), Amílcar Cabral (1924-1973) and painter Antonio Scordia (1918-1988).

To finally reference his archive in my plastic work, in the form of a staging of reproductions of paintings, documents, images, etc…. which will then be used to create a series of works on glass, a space of monstration and memory, a space of transparency and reflections – and then carry the narrative into a science fiction film project.“