Gonçalo Mabunda

Gonçalo Mabunda is a Mozambican contemporary artist whose sculptures transform decommissioned weapons from Mozambique’s civil war into figures, masks, and thrones.

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Mozambican Civil War: A civil conflict fought in Mozambique from 1977 to 1992 between FRELIMO’s government and RENAMO. The war left the weapons that Mabunda turns into sculpture.
Assemblage: An art-making method that constructs a work by joining distinct objects or materials. Mabunda composes sculptures from assembled weapon parts rather than carving a single material.
Disarmament: The reduction or removal of weapons held by states, armed groups, or civilians. Mabunda’s raw materials emerged from efforts to remove weapons from postwar society.
Venice Biennale: An international contemporary art exhibition held in Venice, Italy, on a recurring schedule. Mabunda’s participation brought his weapon sculptures into a prominent international exhibition.
Transforming Arms into Plowshares: A Mozambican disarmament initiative that exchanged weapons for tools and other goods after the civil war. Its recovery of weapons helped make discarded arms available as artistic material.
Found object: An ordinary or discarded object presented or incorporated as art. Weapons become found materials whose histories remain legible in the finished sculptures.
Transitional justice: Legal and social measures used to address abuses and repair societies after conflict or authoritarian rule. His art offers a cultural response to a violent past that legal processes alone cannot settle.
Documenta: A recurring exhibition of contemporary art held in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition’s international platform has presented Mabunda’s work to a broad contemporary-art audience.
FRELIMO: The political movement that led Mozambique’s independence struggle and governed the country after independence. FRELIMO was the government side in the civil war whose weapons shape Mabunda’s work.
Welding: A fabrication process that joins materials, usually metals, by heat, pressure, or both. Welded joints allow weapon components to hold together as complex sculptural forms.