SANDRA POULSON 

HOPE AS A PRAXIS, 2021

‘Hope As A Praxis’ focuses on the forms that ‘necessity’ takes, particularly on its  capacity as ‘ability’. Need as ability has been highlighted in mass by the changes the  world has been subjected to, demonstrating the symbiosis between crisis and  resourcefulness. In Luanda anything and everything has for long been a resource, and  the concepts of upcycling, recycling, and juxtaposing the worthless have continuously  been the reality. This work of investigation of Luanda’s livings and multiple realities,  looks closely at the material culture value of common household items that most of the  population own, across classes, and that are subjected to people’s response to their  material properties. 

The site-specific installation comprises 17 iterations of chairs in the process of breaking.  The chairs are made of green satin fabric, and were pattern cut, sewn and hardened  based on the most common plastic chair used across the continent in people’s  households. 

In Luanda when a plastic chair breaks, and they really do break all the time, people  keep them in the house. Hoping to fix them by juxtaposition with another plastic chair  broken in a different part, two broken chairs lead to a much stronger new one. The  reality is, these chairs are the core home furniture of most of the population, and  therefore used beyond its ‘garden chair’ purpose. In Angola, people call this furniture  ‘espera condição’ which translates to ‘wait for conditions’, the living conditions that  often do not arrive. 

The work therefore, exists in the space between lacking and having. That space is the  hope. Hope As A Praxis. The continual and essential belief that something will  improve.