The double mouth is a declaration: where speech was controlled, Mangovo's figures speak twice, for themselves and for those who were silenced.
Cristiano Mangovo (b. 1982, Cabinda, Angola) fled the Angolan civil war as a child, growing up as a refugee in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he found his calling and graduated from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa, completing additional training in urban scenography and performance. Native of Cabinda, he draws his vision from the rich, multi-layered socio-cultural landscape of that region and from the experience of living between two homelands; today he works between Lisbon and Cabinda.
One of the most prolific painters of Angola's post-war generation, Mangovo has developed a unique and mature style that can be defined as figurative expressionism, animated by energetic rhythms, bold colours and uninhibited organic forms, always with a surrealist twist. His paintings and collages are dominated by deformed figures with multi-faceted faces and double mouths, which have lost their realistic appearance to become reflections of character, feeling and movement. The double mouth carries a precise political charge: born under a regime in which public opinion was strictly controlled, his two-mouthed characters are vocal objectors to censorship, alert figures with multiple eyes, freed from repression. The artist, who describes himself as a bird reporter, a carrier pigeon bringing the voices of the deprived into galleries and public discourse, addresses injustice, inequality, poverty and ecocide through a satirical lens that transcends local specificities to reach a universal dimension, guided by the Cabindan motto "Winkeba e Nkeba bu Nkaka": protect yourselves and protect others too.
Mangovo held his first solo exhibition in 2013 at the Art and Culture Foundation in Luanda. In 2014 he won the Mirella Antognoli Prize of the Italian Embassy and the Ensa-Art Award of the Alliance Française, leading to a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris; in 2015 he presented the installation and performance "Seed of Memory" at the Angola Pavilion of Expo Milano; in 2017 his country honoured him with the solo retrospective "Riches of Africa" at the Camões Portuguese Cultural Centre, Luanda; in 2018 he won the ENSA Arte Prize as best visual artist of Angola, followed by the Lusofonia Award in visual arts (2021) and the Black Rock Senegal residency founded by Kehinde Wiley. Solo exhibitions include "Humano e a Natureza" at AFIKARIS, Paris (2021), "O Sistema" at .insofar, Lisbon (2022), and his American debut with residency and exhibition at Chase Contemporary, New York (2023). His work has been presented at 1-54 in Paris, London, New York and Marrakech, Artissima, Joburg Art Fair, Beirut Art Fair and Art Miami, and in institutional exhibitions including "Reflect#2: Fragments, Fragilities, Memories" at the Museum of African Art, Belgrade (2022). In 2025 he took part in "New Vision from Old Master: African Neo-Mannerism" at Black Liquid Art Gallery, Rome. His works are held in the collections of the Fondation Gandur pour l'Art and the AFRICANA Art Foundation, Switzerland, the Dâr-al-Makhzen, Morocco, the Museu da Presidência da República, Portugal, the Centro Cultural Brasil-Angola, Luanda, the United Nations Population Fund, DRC, and the Jean Pigozzi Contemporary African Art Collection.