Angolan pavilion

As one of the biennial international art exhibition's national pavilions, Angola mounts a show in a Venetian palazzo outside Venice's Giardini.

Reviewers praised the interplay between the photographed subject matter and the Italian Renaissance artwork that adorned the hosting palazzo's walls.

The Biennale parent organization also hosts regular festivals in other arts: architecture, dance, film, music, and theater.

[6] The Palazzo Cini had been closed for the previous two decades, but reopened for Angola with the proviso that Chagas could not modify the fragile building or move anything inside.

[4] While artwork has long been used to recontextualize space, Frieze's Amy Sherlock appreciated how the cheaply produced, unwieldy posters would likely end up as street or canal debris, another step in the cycle of consumerism.

She resisted the urge of taking a poster, considering the wealth of other items she had collected at the Biennale, but when she gave in, she felt "that this inevitability was an essential part of the piece".

[12] Artsy's Giles Peppiatt later named Chagas's series as a recommended purchase at the 2014 1:54 contemporary African art fair.

[14] Francisco Vidal showed Utopia Luanda Machine, a mixed-media work that folds into crates and includes images of Zadie Smith, Kanye West, and cotton plants painted on machetes.

Other works included Binelde Hyrcan's humorous short video of four boys on an imaginary road trip, Délio Jasse's layered images floating in a basin of colored water, Nelo Teixiera's mask sculptures, and António Ole's assemblage of plastic tubs.

[15] The pavilion's commissioner, RitaGT, said that the Angolan Ministry of Culture had been a strong supporter of participation in the Biennale for its impact both on the country and in bringing its contemporary art to an international stage.

[20][21] The scenes focus on Angola's post-colonial independence, e.g., women singing at a carnival, the first Angolan president, and the forced migration of the Nambuangongo people.