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Edson Chagas

Chagas was born in 1977 in Luanda, Angola, and lives between Angola and Portugal.

He studied photography at the University of Wales in Newport (2008); London College of Communication (2007); and Portugal’s Escola Técnica de Imagem e Comunicação (2002) and Centro Comunitário de Arcena (1999).

In 2013, Chagas’s Found Not Taken series was exhibited in Luanda, Encyclopedic City, the Angolan Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion for best national pavilion. The series subsequently featured in the inaugural exhibitions at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2017). He was one of three artists shortlisted for the 11th Novo Banco Photo Award, with an exhibition at Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon (2015). He is among the recipients of the 2018 African Art Award presented by the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.

Solo exhibitions have taken place at the Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna (2016); Instituto Camões – Centro Cultural Português, Luanda (2014); Belfast Exposed Photography (2014) and Memorial Agostinho Neto, Luanda (2013), in addition to two solo shows at Stevenson (2014 and 2019).

Chagas formed part of notable group exhibitions including baħar abjad imsaġar taż-żebbuġ (white sea olive groves) the 1st Malta biennale, Valletta (2024); A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, Tate Modern at Tate Modern (2023); Trace – Formations of Likeness: Photography and Video from The Walther Collection (2023);  Africa Supernova at Kunsthal KAde(2023); The Artist List at Stevenson(2023); the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg (2022); Shifting Dialogues: Photography from The Walther Collection at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (2022); African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Othe in 18th FotoFest Biennial (2020); Crossing Night: Regional Identities X Global Context at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2019); IncarNations: African Art as Philosophy at BOZAR Centre for Arts, Belgium (2019); Mask – The Art of Transformation at Kunstmuseum Bonn (2019); 6th Daegu Photo Biennale (2018); From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-face Picasso, Past and Present at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2018); National Gallery of Victoria Triennial (2017); Deconstructed Spaces, Surveyed Memories at 11th Rencontres de Bamako (2017); Recent Histories – New African Photography at the Walther Collection (2017); Disguise: Masks and Global African Art at Seattle Art Museum and other Venues (2015-16); Ocean of Images, the New Photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015); The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists, MMK Frankfurt, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC and other venues (2014-15); Journal, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2014); NO FLY ZONE, Unlimited Mileage, Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon (2013); Transit, OCA, São Paulo (2013); RAVY Visual Arts Festival, Yaoundé (2012); Future-makers, LVR-LandesMuseum, Bonn (2012); 2nd Luanda Triennial (2010).