Mário Macilau is a multidisciplinary Mozambican artist based in Maputo. His large multi-dimensional portraits and landscapes photographs capture the complex realities of human labour, relocation, and environmental conditions.
Q > What motivated you to start documenting lives with your camera? What themes do you feel compelled to explore?
A > I am motivated by people and their hidden cultural identity. I consider my photographic practice to be a visual investigation, taking a critical view on identity, political issues, and environmental conditions. These three broad themes come into focus through their impact on socially isolated groups, groups who need to retrieve their voices and to cast light on these issues as they affect their own particular experience.
I attempt to explore the way in which conditions of labour, cultural heritage and the environment alter over time. I have always concerned myself specifically with how these conditions are articulated through the environment in which people live, and the relationship that people have to that environment. How do humans sustain themselves and adapt to shifting environments, when their labour, their lives, and by extension, their relationships to one another are all affected by that environment? This results in short-, and at times long-, term projects to present the ongoing positions facing these communities.
Q > Tell us about moments in your life that helped define or change your identity.
A > I can’t specifically precise a single moment or period but certainly I am also trying to do something as [a] human, to improve my life and also the life of those around me. I am not referring to material possession but, yes, about spirituality and the practice of human values and ethics as essence. I had so many opportunities to learn by making mistakes or not. I started to travel at an early age and that helped me also to not limit myself in one culture as the only correct way of living.
Q > Could you give us an overview of your project ‘Growing in Darkness’. What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned by doing it?
A > Some years ago, I started working with street children in Mozambique, spending time with them in order to gain a deeper understanding of their reality. Against the common sense that separates this group of people from the ‘normal’ ones, my aim was to go where everyone advised me not to go. I was determined to reach the site that seemed to frighten so many. I entered their private spaces: bridges and abandoned buildings where they live and sleep, that is, where they camp. These places were very dark, damp and dangerous.
In these makeshift places, there are no facilities, light, water, or any other form of domestic support. Initially, I visited these youth without my camera. These simple encounters allowed this group of children to trust me, and it also allowed me to trust them. Photography can be like a border; not a physical one, rather a mental and emotional one. Holding a camera can install a border between human hearts because, as a photographer, one can think that we can enter someone’s house and start to register someone’s house, take photographs of their secrets and privacy, without actually having even talked to the person.
It is from this position of a friend that I managed to capture their existence: the adversity of their environments, the endurance of their young but possibly condemned bodies, and their resilience that, daily, defies the inhumanity of their hardships.
The photographs do not necessarily aim to represent these children. Instead, my work attempts to give them a voice, a stage: to shine a light on their fleeting and fragile lives. These photographs offer the children a space of relief, whereby the children can compose them, play with their image and reflect on their own appearance.
Q > How did your ‘Faith Series’ come about, and what is the main message you wish to send through this series?
A > Faith documents the practice of animism in contemporary Mozambique. From traditional religions, members believe in the existence of individual spirits that inhabit natural objects and phenomena, whereby the spirits of ancestors can affect the lives of the living. Through their practices, these traditional religions preserve ancient cultures of Mozambican tradition. The religious practices involve teachings, traditional medicine, healing methods, rites of passage for young men and women, and how to behave towards the members of the community. It reflects local and yet diverse conceptions of God and the cosmos.
What is at stake in this photographic engagement with the contradictory phenomenon of faith is less a question of faith, and more a matter of doing, of taking action. While the emergence of the foreign and currently dominant religions converted the religious orientation of the majority of the people of Mozambique, traditional religious beliefs seem to occupy an important part within the everyday life of Mozambique today. Perhaps such focuses on the traditional values of religion are a form of consultation of life. It is a simulation of life, and the photographs of the Faith series invite us to step into life by other means.
Q > What is your favourite image from the ‘Faith Series’, and why is it your favourite?
A > My working process is first of all based on field research. I try as much as I can to take a qualitative method of research concerned with understanding and interpreting the social interactions of groups of people or communities, and society. I usually visit those places, walking around, observing and interacting with local people in their natural settings. When I start shooting, I know what I am doing and I do not take multiple shots, one or two are enough for the result expectation. I know well my preferred light and compositions. This also applies to manipulation — I am not good at that; I do everything on camera.
This is to say that I am the father of all fruits. I do not separate them in a single way. I like the entire set and they are all related for story composition. I have certain pieces that are more successful than others, mostly in the art market audience. The photo I am talking about reflects a story of two young boys playing on a beach in Mozambique, while walking around with caught fish for sale. Child labour is common within the fishing sector, and even more so in informal and small-scale fisheries in Mozambique. The livelihood of the country depends greatly on fisheries, which supports a large part of the local and expatriate population. This photo forms part of my long-term series, FAITH, which focuses on traditional religious practices and the existing relationship between these practices and the natural environment in which they are practiced.
Q > Tell us about life in Maputo: what do you love most about living in the city; what do you like the least about it?
A > I grew up in Township and today I spend time between the city and Township. It’s still very confusing for me what we call “city” and “non-city” in Mozambique. It’s easy to understand if we look at this first by the geographical location of each term, but oppositely in Mozambique we call it “City” where you have modern buildings and the concentration of all infrastructures. It’s all about how economic processes shape conceptions of a city. So, I do like to get down from the building I live in today and to spend time where I was born and raised. There are a lot of stories to live, to hear and a lot to learn and to share. This helps me to understand how culture and economy intertwine in the city by underwriting social structures and culture and how the new generation can preserve those values.
Q > Where will your photography take you next?
A > Well. Who knows? Life is full of surprises and I always have hope but rather than that at full time, I am concerned about investing my time and energy for what I love to do. I work very hard but at the same time I enjoy life a lot, so for me what is important is now. If I do things well now, I will be so happy now and my future will be unexpectedly bright. I have dreams of doing things but I do take my time. So during my travelling experiences, I have learnt that artists can have an impact in their home countries by contributing to art education and culture development. When choosing to build my studio in a township in Maputo, I decided to focus on the potential of creating a multidisciplinary creative space for my own artwork production, as well as the impact the studio could have through art education and outreach projects. This naturally progressed to include an International Artist-in-Residence programme with the aim of encouraging collaboration between emerging visual international artists as well as with the local community as a stable platform for exchange and a bridge to creativity within local or isolated communities.
Today, I am still in battle to make it work well. The residencies offer the possibility, on one hand, for artists to further explore their practice, and on the other, to confront the limitations previously faced in their local environment.
Mário Macilau (b. 1984, Mozambique) lives and works in Maputo. He is a multi-disciplinary artist most known for his photography. Selected exhibitions include: Songs of the Present (Musée de la Photographie de Saint Louis, Senegal, 2018); Afrique Capitales (La Villette, Paris, 2017); Pavilion of the Holy See, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Making Africa (Vitra Museum, Weil am Rhein, 2015); Discovery Show (Fotofestiwal Łódź, Poland, 2015); (Pangaea: Art from Africa and Latin America, Saatchi Gallery, London, 2014); The African Art Auction, Bonhams, London (2013); Recontres Picha (Biennale de Lubumbashi, 2013). Macilau has been shortlisted for the 2019 Mast Award and was a finalist of the Unicef Photo of the Year in 2009, the Greenpeace Photo Award 2016. His work is in the permanent collection of the Pompidou Centre.
Images courtesy of the artist © Mário Macilau
