Kalashnikovs become thrones, bullets become ornament: death is literally turned into life.
Gonçalo Mabunda (b. 1975, Maputo, Mozambique) is a sculptor and anti-war activist, internationally celebrated for transforming the deactivated weapons of Mozambique's civil war (1976-1992) into thrones, masks and anthropomorphic figures. His practice was born in 1995 within "Transforming Guns into Hopes", the Christian Council of Mozambique's programme inspired by the biblical verse of swords beaten into ploughshares, through which some 800,000 weapons have been collected. His ironic thrones expose the bond between power and violence, while his masks reinvent the sub-Saharan tradition with a modernist edge compared to Braque and Picasso. He took part in the Venice Biennale in 2015, represented Mozambique in its National Pavilion in 2019, and has exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the Hayward Gallery, the Mori Art Museum and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. He lives and works in Maputo.