The Surrealists understood that so much depends on context: What is ordinary lining a glove, for instance, becomes grotesque in a teacup. Angolan artist Sandra Poulson — who studied fashion in Lisbon and London, and lives between the latter, Angola’s capital, Luanda, and Amsterdam — operates under a similar ethos of off-kilter recontextualization. In her first museum exhibition, at MoMA PS1, she presents wooden assemblages embedded in or punctured by the floating signifiers connected with Angola after its Civil War (1975–2002), which began immediately after the nation gained independence from Portugal. A bed frame lurches drunkenly toward the viewer; a mirror sits sullenly in the corner, a headboard bolts upright like a soldier. Across these mostly household objects, Poulson emphasizes that history is something that haunts you as you sleep, as you dress, as you look at yourself in the mirror.
Several complex circuits converge in Poulson’s work: the global trade routes that brought this specific wood into the artist’s path; symbols connected to important events in Angolan history as they intersect with world events; and, finally, Poulson’s own stylistic iconography. The material itself is freighted: Vintage Dutch objects made from wood that might be sourced from Angola sit along chipboard furniture made in China in an American style. It is the physical manifestation of a global trade network made local, the items carrying evidence of their circulation — peeling inventory stickers or faded stamps — and their use, such as the ring imprint of a cup.
Poulson’s method, then, is not so much about lodging one signifier (logos, presidents’ silhouettes, and symbols of local organizations) into another (wood) so much as colliding them together. Her interventions certainly draw attention to the unseen forces that have shaped these objects — the symbol for the European Union, a dominant trade partner, appears multiple times. But by setting them in wood, rather than more ephemeral media such as digital imagery or even apparel, she draws attention to their significance and heft: These symbols and what they represent do not simply layer over your skin; they puncture the way you live.
Some of the furniture-as-artworks on view, such as the found mirror “Untitled (Mirror)” or the wooden speaker “Leitura dos Acordos de Alvor, January 1975” (Reading of the Alvor Accords), which plays aloud the Angolan independence agreement, feel both underdone and too on-the-nose. While I liked that the former made a trick mirror of the exhibition space, intensifying its surreality by reflecting and recombining the other absurdist objects on its surface in jarring and unexpected ways, positioning a found object in the corner as the sole intervention felt a bit cheap compared to other works, and fell proportionately flat to me. Meanwhile, the latter emits audio so softly that I think even Portuguese speakers would miss its significance; even when noticed, the work’s intended effect of drawing attention to the way history permeates lived experience is already achieved more compellingly by other pieces in the show.
plywood, and steel
The more successful objects on view are simultaneously unfinished and highly finished, heightening their absurdity. In “Cabinda Dreams” (all works 2024), a bedframe with the EU logo punched into the cheap wooden headboard has been sawed at a clean diagonal on one end so that it angles haphazardly, as though pleading for help or reaching to grab you. Other objects short-circuited my sense of material logic: The wooden headboard of “Candidato a Presidente da República de Angola” (Candidate for President of the Republic of Angola) sits upright on a sheet of rusted steel, uncannily unsupported. I couldn’t determine either the quality or weight of the wood. Elsewhere — particularly in “Confessionário” (Confessional) — there are apertures where there shouldn’t be, glass where you wouldn’t expect it. And walk around to the back of “Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus” (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God) and you’ll see that it’s been blown out, the cheap corkboard drawers sagging from the lack of support, speaking to the disasters that hide beneath the veneer of stability. Meanwhile, “Propaganda Flush” declares and then immediately curtails its function: The toilet is suspended in the air, torn from the sewage pipes that make it what it is.
The title of the exhibition, Este quarto parece uma República! (This Bedroom Looks Like a Republic!) comes from an Angolan saying that compares the messiness of nation-building to that of a room. Indeed, Poulson’s room, made of wood, that at once humble and enduring material, makes history palpable. Global trade, colonial legacies, and the signifiers she presents are not remote and immaterial; they are the architecture of daily life.
Sandra Poulson: Este quarto parece uma República! continues at MoMA PS1 (22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens) through October 6. The exhibition was curated by Elena Ketelsen González.