Suzy Bila

Faces that hold the water’s memory

Maria Suzete Carmona Bila — Suzy — was born in Maputo in August 1974. She began in 1993 at the studio of Noel Langa in Maputo, was distinguished in the national competition Descoberta (1996) and moved to Portugal at the end of that year, entering Ar.Co — Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual, Lisbon, in 1998. Her first solo exhibition, Segunda Vida, opened at the Galeria Municipal da Costa da Caparica in 1998, followed by Espelhos e Véus (Espaço Fala Só, Lisbon, 1999) and O(s) Sentido(s) do Corpo (Galeria Municipal da Amadora, 2000).

Her Reflexos series — heads emerging from washes of burgundy, rose and deep blue, at once portrait and apparition — has made her one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Mozambican painting. She works in watercolour, oil and acrylic, guided, in her own words, by intuition rather than territories.

In 2018 she won the Mário Silva Prize (Figueira da Foz) with the canvas Onda, and in 2021–22 she was invited to represent Mozambique at the national pavilion of Expo 2020 Dubai. Recent exhibitions include Nua e Crua (Centro Cultural Brasil-Moçambique, Maputo, 2019), AL.BA (Municipal Gallery of Montijo, 2021), Paisagens Interiores (Galeria Amagao, Art Macao Biennale programme, Macau, 2023) and A(r)mar o tempo (Casa Museu Bissaya Barreto, Coimbra). She featured in Moçambi-Cá (UCCLA, Lisbon, 2023) alongside Malangatana, Chissano and Reinata Sadimba, and lives and works in Montijo, Portugal.