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Marking Namoda’s first institutional project in Europe, this new commission inaugurates Turner Contemporary’s annual programme inviting artists to engage with the gallery’s distinctive architecture and coastal setting.
Namoda’s vibrant and figurative images interweave the personal with the historical, and the everyday with cultural mythologies. Born in Mapoto, Mozambique and currently living in Italy, she has lived across Africa, Europe, America and Asia. These experiences have influenced her perspective, allowing her to create nuanced visualisations of post-colonial Mozambique within an increasingly globalised world.
Recognised primarily for her paintings, Namoda’s installation for the Sunley Gallery window is inspired by a recent painting of two figures on a beach.
Drawing from her early film studies and interest in storytelling, Namoda creates images inspired by found photographs and memories, each populated by imagined characters. Her paintings function like cinematic stills, capturing fleeting moments that hint at broader, untold narratives. Influenced by Mozambican magical realism, film, mythology, and art history, her landscapes possess an ethereal, dreamlike quality. This atmosphere is heightened by her distinctive colour palette that seamlessly bridges the mundane and the metaphysical, grounding her work in the everyday and the spiritual.
Engaging with the histories of artist-designed stained glass windows, particularly those in chapels such as Henri Matisse’s luminous work at the Chapelle du Rosaire in the South of France, Namoda reimagines the window, bathed in colour and light, as a place of contemplation for visitors over the summer months. Namoda’s window will also be illuminated after dark, ensuring its radiant presence remains visible from the shoreline, creating a work that is visible by day and night.
The Sunley Gallery Summer Commission is curated by Melissa Blanchflower, Senior Curator at Turner Contemporary. Cassi Namoda realised this project with designer Charles Dorrance-King. Production is by Vinyline.
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