Polly Savage

Between 1961 and 1986, the contexts in which artists could train and practice in Mozambique radically shifted. During the country’s transition from overseas territory of Portugal’s quasi-fascist Estado Novo regime, to Marxist-Leninist vanguard state, to neo-liberal democracy, expressions of international solidarity with the Mozambique liberation front (FRELIMO) generated dynamic flows of people, objects and ideas into and out of the country. This state of flux produced a range of opportunities for artists, as well as contingent expectations for the role of their work in the new nation. Understanding art education and patronage as both an apparatus of power and a locus of transnational exchange, this thesis focuses on the artists who navigated this shifting terrain. Whilst these artists all articulated, in different ways, the struggle against colonialism and their vision for a future nation, their approaches often ran counter to the prevailing political discourse and aesthetic pedagogies. Ultimately, I argue that this dissonance reveals how deeply the parameters for art in Mozambique were contested by artists during this time.