Norval Foundation in collaboration with Goodman Gallery presents Cassi Namoda’s first institutional exhibition and most significant on the continent, Is it sunny or cloudy in the land you live on?. The significance of this is amplified by it being her first major solo on the continent. Using the structure of a mid-career survey, Namoda brings together existing and new paintings into what she describes as ‘a retrospective of sentiments’, revisiting subjects and ideas from across her career.  

Namoda is a painter whose work transfigures the cultural mythologies and historical narratives of life in post-colonial Africa, particularly those of the artist’s native Mozambique. Namoda’s paintings are highly elusive, drawing upon literary, cinematic and architectural influences that capture the expansiveness of her specifically Luso-African vantage point.  

Few of Namoda’s works have been direct self-portraits. Although many works speak to a personal history, they do not specifically present the artist. Viewers are welcomed into the show by Love and its Unfortunate Circumstances (2018), a work which presents the artist holding the severed head of a donkey within a luscious forest scene. This work introduces a recurring motif, the small sun which symbolises celestial energy and balance.  

Throughout the exhibition Namoda explores landscape in multiple ambiguous other worldly forms. As a ‘figurative’ painter, Namoda grounds her often mythical or allegorical figures within intensely coloured landscapes where markers of time or season are abstract. However, an intense African colour palette is still recognisable, heightened with dreamlike scenes in works including Is it sunny or cloudy on the land that you live on?, The Joy of Harvest and A Wanderer from Mount Namuli.  

Namoda embeds European painting masters into her work with influences ranging from Picasso’s rose period (“Acrobat and Young Harlequin” Ode to Picasso Rose Period), to Munch (Maria’s Strange Entanglement) and Matisse (Portrait of Makonde Woman). Each reference is drawn into Namoda’s distinctive use of colour and composition, creating her own visual language from a multitude of references.   

Women have always been central figures in Namoda’s work. In this exhibition Namoda includes a powerful Portrait of Makonde Woman, depicting the strength of the Makonde culture that was never colonised by Portuguese settlers. The Mother and Child from Matola reconsiders the European mother and child as a working mother commuting with her child, boundless in her strength and energy.  

Arafah Gaza’s Appearance incorporates self-portraiture, landscape and womanhood. The work is inspired by Namoda’s daughter’s birth and the slow observance of motherhood. The tropical flower in the composition is a reflection of the nostalgia for one’s own childhood that occurs in the early months of becoming a mother.  

Cassi Namoda (b. 1988, Mozambique) is known for her strong colour palette and narrative approach. Her hybrid narratives are at once wondrous and poignant, everyday and fantastical, archival and current. Namoda will participate in the upcoming Sharjah Biennial.  

Notable solo exhibitions include Life has become a foreign language, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town; To Live Long is To See Much, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg (2020); and Bar Texas, 1971, Library Street Collective, Detroit (2017). Group shows include ECHO. Wrapped in Memory, MoMu, Antwerp; When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2022 – 2023); American Women, La Patinoire Royale-Galerie Valérie Bach (2020) and Little is Enough for Those with Love/Mimi Nakupenda, The Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019).  

Namoda’s work is held in public collections including Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Inhotim Museum, Brumadinho, Brazil; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Long Museum, Shanghai; MACAAL, Marrakesh; Museum Azman, Malaysia; Norval Foundation, Cape Town; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami and The Studio Museum; New York.