Angolan, b. 1980; lives and works in Lisbon and Milan
Délio Jasse, whose artisanal practice combines elements of printmaking, photography, appropriation, and installation is centrally concerned with collective memory. Born and raised in Luanda, the capital of Angola, Jasse moved away from the country as a teenager towards the end of a protracted civil war, and did not return until 2011. By then, financed by its vast oil reserves, Luanda had transformed itself from post-colonial ruin to one of the most expensive cities in the world. Jasse created Terreno Ocupado as a way to reconnect with his home, photographing its evolving cityscape and new urban realities within. Using a hand-applied cyanotype process, Jasse infuses his contemporary images with not only a palpable sense of temporality, but also the vagaries of the sunlight he uses to print. People and vehicles circulating amongst the city’s streets, bridges, and motorways, and modern buildings clustered with vestiges from the country’s colonial past—expressions of what Jasse refers to as a "city in a permanent state of change"—are here rendered elegiacally as palimpsests.
