Cassi Namoda (b. 1988) is a Maputo-born painter whose richly coloured figurative works bring together personal memory, Mozambican history, myth and everyday life. Her work is held by the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Having briefly studied cinematography, she paints scenes like frames from a larger story, using flattened perspective, expressive outlines and saturated pinks and ochres to create a distinctive magical realism.
Cassi Namoda (b. 1988, Maputo, Mozambique) is a painter whose richly coloured figurative works bring together personal memory, Mozambican history, myth and the rhythms of everyday life. Having grown up across several countries and briefly studied cinematography, she approaches painting almost like filmmaking, building scenes that feel like fragments of a larger story. Her work draws on archival photography, literature and art history, combining African vernacular traditions with references to European modernism. The result is a distinctive magical realism in which ordinary encounters are charged with nostalgia, desire, humour and melancholy. Flattened perspective, expressive outlines and saturated fields of pink, ochre, green and deep blue are hallmarks of her style. Many of her paintings reflect on Mozambique’s colonial past and its cultural encounters. Lourenço Marques, referenced in one of her titles, was the name of Maputo until the country’s independence in 1975. Namoda’s works are held in collections including the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
