SOPHIE MULLINS-POOLE | «Are we in this world?»
24 Julho 2025 16h00
SOPHIE MULLINS-POOLE | Are we in this world?
Open Studio | 24-25-26-27 July 2025, 16:00-20:00
Artist Talk | 24 July 2025, 18h00
Artist Talk | 24 July 2025, 18h00
Zaratan presents «Are we in this world?», a pop-up exhibition by artist-in-residence Sophie Mullins-Poole, developed during her one-month residency in Lisbon. The show is complemented by an artist talk with Sophie Mullins-Poole on Thursday, July 24th, at 6:00 PM, and by the release of a limited-edition risograph poster, produced in collaboration with Stolen Prints.
“I have spent a lot of my life observing the disassociation of people from their society, more specifically, white South Africans losing sight of our history, and refusing to understand the harm of our present. The cultural and social ramifications of Apartheid embedded the habit of separatism and segregation so intensely that it has entered into our embodied lexicon. Our desperate attempt to alleviate the fear of being alive in a world largely unknowable, has resulted in an inordinate attempt to categorise and separate out our environment to the point of splitting the atom, splitting land, splitting races, splitting the self. This comes with viewing different emotions as oppositional rather than co-constitutive, seeing natural plurality as a problem to be solved, and living a life clouded with the delusion that we are separate from the soil, and that it is indeed possible to exist without consequences, without leaving fingerprints.
We are deeply permeable creatures - cellularly - and attempts at containment or cage are most often an act of dominance, over others and over elements of ourselves. We can make ourselves insensible to the pain around us, but in doing so we sever an ability to truly connect, we shallow our understanding so that the depths remain a peripheral pool, neither entered nor ever truly looked at.
I cast out my senses. What is left?"
— Sophie Mullins-Poole
BIOGRAPHY:
SOPHIE FLORENCE MULLINS-POOLE is a South African researcher and interdisciplinary artist from Makhanda, Eastern Cape. The daughter of two artists, she has been steeped in the South African arts and culture scene since childhood, and politically involved as an activist since the age of sixteen. Getting a Master’s degree in Contemporary Arts & Literature, Cultural Interventions and Social Justice, her artwork utilises concepts and praxis from social science, primarily rooted in feminist decolonial theory. She views culture as story, a malleable, ancient and cyclical act of constructing the world and being constructed in turn - therefore viewing culture as something that can be directly engaged, fed and changed. Sophie has engaged in many artforms and mediums, working across painting, Rapoko carving, weaving, writing, scenography, curation, photography and film. Her research has focused on culture and de/coloniality, particularly within the South African context; dealing explicitly with the contemporary realities of settler colonialism as experienced socially, culturally and personally. As she pulls from social science, art making and activism, her work (in any and all of these fields) tries to ground itself in actionability and impact. Her current work is a diaristic, exploring the contemporary and historical resistance towards empire, and the desire for a different but ultimately unknowable future - grappling with the feeling of being stuck on the precipice of a cliff, too afraid to look over the edge, and unable to step back.
SOPHIE FLORENCE MULLINS-POOLE is a South African researcher and interdisciplinary artist from Makhanda, Eastern Cape. The daughter of two artists, she has been steeped in the South African arts and culture scene since childhood, and politically involved as an activist since the age of sixteen. Getting a Master’s degree in Contemporary Arts & Literature, Cultural Interventions and Social Justice, her artwork utilises concepts and praxis from social science, primarily rooted in feminist decolonial theory. She views culture as story, a malleable, ancient and cyclical act of constructing the world and being constructed in turn - therefore viewing culture as something that can be directly engaged, fed and changed. Sophie has engaged in many artforms and mediums, working across painting, Rapoko carving, weaving, writing, scenography, curation, photography and film. Her research has focused on culture and de/coloniality, particularly within the South African context; dealing explicitly with the contemporary realities of settler colonialism as experienced socially, culturally and personally. As she pulls from social science, art making and activism, her work (in any and all of these fields) tries to ground itself in actionability and impact. Her current work is a diaristic, exploring the contemporary and historical resistance towards empire, and the desire for a different but ultimately unknowable future - grappling with the feeling of being stuck on the precipice of a cliff, too afraid to look over the edge, and unable to step back.
ZARATAN – Arte Contemporânea | Rua de São Bento 432, 1250-221 Lisboa
SUPPORT | República Portuguesa – Cultura, Juventude e Desporto / Direção-Geral das Artes / Direção-Geral das Artes
SUPPORT | República Portuguesa – Cultura, Juventude e Desporto / Direção-Geral das Artes / Direção-Geral das Artes