Edson Chagas is an Angolan photographer born in 1977. He trained as a photojournalist at the London College of Communication and further studied documentary photography at the University of Wales. His work explores cities and consumerism. He captures colourful minimalist compositions both on the street and in the studio. As a whole, his work reflects his interest in social and political issues.
In his Found Not Taken series, Chagas walked through the streets of Luanda, Angola; London, England; and Newport, Wales collecting discarded objects. Additionally, he would move the objects, at times slightly and in other instances significantly, before photographing them. This means the objects were taken out of their context and photographed in relation to a carefully chosen background. Further, the mundane items are turned into abstract icons that animate the city. This created a new relationships between the objects and their context, form, and its codification. What might seem at first glance a symbol of a society characterized by waste and instant obsolescence also shows what is perceived as real is actually a construct. A selection from the series represented Angola at the 55th Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion for Best National Participation.
A selection from the series represented Angola at the 55th Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion for Best National Participation.The series subsequently featured in the inaugural exhibitions at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa. It’s been exhibited at Museu Coleção Berardo in Lisbon, Portugal.
Chagas’s Oikonomo series of self-portraits with shopping bags over his head were intended to hide his identity behind symbols of globalised capitalism and secondhand consumerism in Luanda. In Africa, consumerism is further compounded by the influx of second-hand goods that saturate local markets throughout the continent. Accordingly, this series serves as commentary on permeating African consumer culture. Oikonomo has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum’s 2016 Disguise: Masks and Global African Art exhibition.
In 2015, Chagas was chosen for the Museum of Modern Art‘s Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015 contemporary photography exhibition. He features in the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg (2022). His group exhibitions include Shifting Dialogues: Photography from The Walther Collection at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen 2022. He has also done African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other at the 18th FotoFest Biennial in Houston. He is among the recipients of the 2018 African Art Award presented by the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.
