
Sofia Vellano Rubin
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Provenance
Acquired from Francois Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, October 2019;
A private collection.
Cassi Namoda was born in Mozambique, holding duel Mozambique and American heritage. Fascinated with her family history, Namoda conflates figurative painting with historical narratives in a postcolonial world. Thematically, her work emphasises the emotions that reflect those of her understanding of her ancestry. Referring to her work as 'cinematic' her work is consistently stooped in often complex narratives:
"I briefly went to school to study cinematography at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. I was especially interested in visualization and narrative. Someone once told me, "In African culture, you're born as a griot, a storyteller." I think that was always innate in me – that I wanted to tell a story". (Cassi Namoda, ed. Stephanie Sporn, How I became an artist: Cassi Namoda, (Art Basel: Online article, 2025).
Intertwining art and literature, Maria Borges of Goa derives from Transforming Mozambique: The Politics of Privatization, 1975-2000 by M. Anne Pitcher. Captivated by the character Maria Borges in her stoicism, strength, compromise, heartbreak, triumph, and peril. Namoda says of Maria Borges, "Maria is a metaphor that I've continued to explore.".
Namoda has developed great prestige so early in her career. She has exhibited at the Mendes Wood DM in Sao Paulo, the Francois Ghebaly Gallery in LA, The Museum of African Contemporary Art AI Maaden in Marrakech, the Studio Museum in New York, and the Perez Art Museum in Miami. Her first Institutional exhibition, Is it sunny or cloudy in the land you live on? was held at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town in 2024. Most recently, she participated in the 16th Sharjah Biennial.