Artist, Jo Ractliffe: I'm very interested in histories of violence and in the way violence is manifest in the landscape.
My name is Jo Ractliffe. And this is the body of work that I made in 2007 in Angola called Terreno Ocupado.
Angola, in the late 60s and 70s, is involved in an independence struggle against Portugal, which had been running Angola for 500 years, actually. In 1975, when the Portuguese withdrew, that was the beginning of the civil war that was aided on one side by America and South Africa, on the other by Cuba and Russia. It lasted over 30 years from 1975 to 2002.
And so the series attempts to look at a moment that speaks to both the loss and the horrors of war, the layers of imperialism, colonialism. And then also the kind of vibrancy that was emerging in a moment where Angolans had managed to survive with fortitude, patience, and resilience and there was this promise of a very different future.