Sandra Poulson (she/her) is an Angolan artist living between London and Luanda. Her work discusses the political, cultural, and socio-economic landscape of Angola to analyse the relationship between history, oral tradition, and global political structures towards the understanding of ‘near-south’ appropriate (and often in place) approaches.
Through auto-ethnographic and archaeological approaches, her practice continually operates as a space for questioning and unravelling ‘networks of existence’ that understand the dynamics of the ‘uninhabitable as a methodology’. While drawing upon inherited societal memories of colonial Angola and its civil war to dismantle contemporary narratives through semiotic studies.
Her practice utilizes family and societal passed down knowledge to dismantle contemporary fluxes of reality in Angola through semiotic studies of ordinary (cultural) objects such as household items as actors in political and cultural ongoing transformations. Which inherently draws the questions posed by the work to the task of decoloniality.
She is the recipient of the MullenLowe NOVA Award (2020) and the Central Saint Martins Dean’s Award (2020). Her work has been exhibited in various exhibitions internationally, most recently at the Lagos Biennial (2019) and Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the South London Gallery (2021). She has had solo presentations at ARCO Madrid (2021); V.O Curations, London (2022); Acne Studios, Stockholm (2022).
Among many artist talks, Poulson has been in conversation about her project ‘Economy of the Dust’ with curator Natalia Grabowska at Prada Frames, organised by Forma Fantasma in Milan (2023).
Poulson is currently showing ‘How Much for the Coal?’ at Bold Tendencies, London (2023) and ‘Sabão Azul e Água’ commissioned for the British Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2023).
