At the invitation of BoCA, Kiluanji Kia Henda creates a project that takes on two distinct formats: first, a theater show, presented in partnership with the D. Maria II National Theater, then a large-scale installation that includes occasional performative activations, presented in partnership with MAAT.

In the Angolan desert, originally the bottom of an ocean, travellers who return to their homeland are sometimes the target of “pemba/mbindi”, spells intended to keep them in their community and prevent them from leaving again. “Coral dos Corpos sem Norte” considers migration as a process of pemba. Leaving as returning. The journey as staying at home. A curse that follows our every step and carries us back to where we started. A pathway of concentric circles with no beginning and no end.

The diasporic condition, be it forced or chosen, is part of the human condition. However, through these movements, instead of paradise we encounter militarised hellscapes. In particular, those who believe that the European continent offers a new life are met with an appalling reality. According to the artist, since the Enlightenment, Europe has tried to build an image of reason, peace, and morality, being the supremacist force that colonised the African continent, a continent that even after independence, failed to achieve a place of peace to shelter its people. The Mediterranean Sea thus became a graveyard of bodies without a destination. A graveyard of lives lost in the desperate attempt to cross over.