Nastio mosquito biography
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Photo: Nástio Mosquito, 3 Continents (Video still), 2010, Duration video: 07:45 min., © Nástio Mosquito, Courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA)
Info: Curator: Nav Haq, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA), Leuvenstraat 32, Antwerp, Belgium, Duration: 11/10/2024-26/1/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.muhka.be/
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Because I believe that one of the struggles that we have now, as citizens or organized societies, is to find the life within all these political and corporate decisions that we are both participants and victims of.”
Nástio Mosquito
Moore’s Bad & Better Mundi
13/10/2019 – 26/01/2020
Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens
Museumlaan 14
Deurle (BE)
Courtesy of the artist and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens
Photography: by Rik Vannevel
COLLECT ART BY NASTIO MOSQUITO
Nástio Mosquito
M.F.H.N.S.
Rather than escalating upward, with room for only the preacher to stand nearest God, the square altar extends downward, into the ground. “King of Klowns”, Mosquito’s first major museum overview exhibition, considers the evolution of his practice from the early 2000s through to today. Do you want to be remembered after you die?
Two groups of men and women dressed entirely in white enter the Fondazione’s courtyard from opposing directions: one stoically singing Mosquito’s interpretation of the 19th century hymn “Jesus Loves Me,” the other singing the same Christian song but in a livelier, gospel style. Mosquito has a particularly emotional relationship to music, and King of Klowns offers a self-deprecating look at what he has created.
We ask ourselves to change, we ask our environment to change, we ask systems to change. the exhibition immerses visitors in Mosquito’s realm of complex characters, in turn demanding of us that we learn to navigate a complex world. Each of these elements carry an amalgam of layers of meaning and overflow with ambiguity.
In September, the exhibition will expand with a month-long presentation of Mosquito’s latest film endeavor, Synchronicity is My Bitch: The Cinematic Experience. A. L. Moore was an entrepreneur ‘by nature’, whose major breakthrough came following the sale of sixteen containers of fake leather wallets produced in China.
Peeking behind closed doors, we notice that his motivations are in fact self-interest and criminal deceit, as he seeks to exploit the media and the political system itself. By the end, he is seemingly so inebriated, that he can only repeatedly holler ‘Angooola!’. “Nástia’s Manifesto” exemplifies Mosquito’s intent to communicate ideas of irreverence and liberation.
The delivery of the speeches proceeds via an adopted persona that possesses a sort of confident naivety, pronouncing that he has “bought Europe” or “bought the US of A”, then ending somewhat comically by giving up prematurely during the delivery of the last speech, and after some hesitation, stating dismissively “Fuck Africa”— before walking off camera.
Whether to progress or to regress— mind tricks are a politician’s best friend. In this short intense scene, he cries such things as: “I am naked!” and “Am I the only one wanting to feel free?” with such rawness, that the work becomes a proclamation of survival, love, financial precarity, struggle for sanity and emancipation. A key formative work in the career of Nástio Mosquito, the video “Nástia’s Manifesto” (2008) offers us seventeen ingredients for success.
In contrast, a second video, set at an unspecified time, sees A. L. Moore roaming inside an abandoned building, having seemingly lost his sanity, perhaps after having been crushed by the dog-eat-dog world of politics. Taking us along a unique journey, we also encounter substantial new productions. On the seats, books rest next to headphones that transmit Mosquito’s meditative instructions: “Write on [the books], whatever you feel this moment celebrates … Declare what you’re in favor of, declare what you love … This space is yours.
He works with multimedia, installations, performance, music and the spoken word. Intrigued by the potential and specificities of different verbal, musical and visual forms of language, the artist creates engaging public performances in which politics and entertainment become complementary aspects in a unitary artistic program.