New Artist Member: Mónica de Miranda
Posted May 26th, 2021 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Films, News / Events
Canyon Cinema is delighted to welcome Lisbon-based artist Mónica de Miranda to the collection!
Mónica de Miranda is a Portuguese visual artist and filmmaker of Angolan ancestry. Working in photography, mixed media, and video, de Miranda deals with themes of geography and identity, expressing quiet visions of personal history and exploring the poetics of belonging. She received her PhD in Visual Art from the University of Middlesex in 2014, having previously completed a Masters in Art and Education at the UCL Institute of Education in London, as well as a BA in Visual Arts at Camberwell College of Arts. A researcher as well as an artist, she is the founder of the Project Hangar at the Centre of Artistic Research in Lisbon, as well as helping to found the Triangle Network, an artistic residency program.
Mónica’s South Circular is now available for rent from Canyon Cinema.
South Circular (2019, 24 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
South Circular is a research video project that builds a narrative around the former Lisbon Military Road and reflects urbanism, immigration, and decolonization processes.
The video develops a narrative between reality and fiction as a journey that traces, like an archaeological search, the landscape of the former Military Road of Lisbon. Built around the city in the 19th century, it rescues the memories of fragile and lost places in the peripheries of contemporary Lisbon. In the past, this road was used to protect Lisbon against French and English invasions. Currently, part of this road has disappeared, but in what remains, it extends for 45 km around the city and is occupied by social, council and self build houses from Caxias to Loures, and also on the other side of the Tagus River in Almada and Monte Caparica. The road today continues to be a kind of border that ‘protects’ the city against foreign invasions. It prevents a significant number of immigrants and Africans from entering the heart of the city, forcing them to remain on the outskirts of Lisbon at its limits – in the limbo of city life.