Jota Mombaça
KADIST San Francisco is pleased to welcome Jota Mombaça for a three-week residency which coincides with a forthcoming solo exhibition. This is the interdisciplinary artist’s first U. S. residency and solo exhibition, which will comprise installation and performance work focusing on the restless, elemental properties of water. While in residence, Mombaça plans to visit the Port of San Francisco, study shipwreck records at the Maritime Research Center archives, and take a diving lesson on how to sink. These activities are part of a body of research the artist refers to as ‘THE SINKING SHIP/PROSPERITY’ which considers speculative memory, the dynamics of excess, and grieving time, among other water-related subjects. The residency provides an opportunity for Mombaça, whose work A Gente Combinamos De Não Morrer (BANDEIRA #1) / Us Agreed Not To Die (FLAG #1) (2018) is part of the KADIST collection, to expand their language of cultural resistance by accessing new resources and introducing their work to communities in the Bay Area and throughout the world. Jota Mombaça (b. 1991 Natal, Brazil. Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Pronouns: she/they) defines themselves as a nonbinary travesti of color, a Latin American slang that has been reappropriated by transfeminist activists and subjects as a local, political gender identity. The term reflects the artist’s interest in the tensions between desires for opacity and drives toward self-preservation as experienced by radicalized trans artists. Decolonialism, gender disobedience, and climate activism are often points of departure for their performative works, which have been exhibited at the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018), the 32nd and 34th Bienal de São Paulo (2016 and 2020), and the 22nd Sydney Biennial (2020).