Camões - Portuguese Cultural Center will open to the public, on Monday, September 12, the exhibition "The Dance of Shadows", by artist Butcheca, one of the most prominent names on the Mozambican contemporary art scene.

This show brings together unpublished works by this Mozambican artist who lives and works in KaTembe. The curator was the writer Nelson Saúte.

Butcheca has been working for about three decades in the field of painting, and has been reflecting on various current issues that disturb him.

"The Dance of Shadows" is another amazing public solo presentation by this artist, with the exhibition of a number of recent works.

In the project conceived for the space of "Camões", Butcheca gives us compositions inspired by movement, dance, rituals, masks, identities and cultures that are guided by diversity and simultaneously by a common and unique line.

In each work, his universe is revealed to us through enigmatic environments almost always achieved with recourse to the counterpoint of the figurative and the abstract. We can also highlight his peculiar stroke, a sublime characteristic of an entire expression found in most of his paintings and drawings.

As mentioned, the project of this exhibition counts with the special participation of Nelson Saúte, who wrote an essay entitled "Choreographies of Mozambicanity".

In this interesting reflection on the artist and his creative process, Nelson Saúte says "this exhibition will be, in the subtlety, intelligence, and inventiveness of its proponent, a lavish and revealing celebration of Mozambicanness and a testimony to a splendid moment in the painter's life and creation.

Butcheca subscribes here to his excellent creative phase, his powerful invention, his powerful ability to make metaphors and tell us about social and cultural reality with the mastery of the great inventors. Mocking, at times and for certain, the lure of the fakery that the mask represents or the deception or illusion that the shadow does not disregard."

The exhibition "The Dance of Shadows" is organized by Camões - Portuguese Cultural Center and sponsored by Millennium BIM.

This project is part of the 3rd edition of the Gala Gala Festival, an initiative that counts with the support of the European Union Delegation in Mozambique and that gathers in the same week (September 12th to 18th) the programming of several cultural spaces in Maputo City.