Reinata Sadimba

Reinata Sadimba was born in 1945 in Homba, Cape Delgado Province, Mozambique.

Orphaned by her father, she remained with her mother and three brothers and when she was very young, was forced into a combined marriage that did not last long but from which she had three children. Daughter of peasants, she received the traditional education of the Maconde ethnicity, which included the manufacture of utilitarian objects in clay (plates, pitchers, etc.).

She later meets her second husband with whom she has more children. During the liberation war and the first years of Mozambique’s Independence, Reinata lost seven of her children and divorced from her second marriage.

Nimo, where she used to live at the time, is one of the villages of the plateau of Mueda, the cradle of the ethnicity Maconde. Being a very original and independent woman in a small village caused her many misunderstandings and difficulties. In the traditional familiar activities’ division, the potter’s work belongs exclusively to women, but Reinata gradually transforms the pots into anthropomorphic figures, changing the role of the potter into that of an artist and invading a space, reserved until then, to men.

In 1985 facing various difficulties with her young son, Reinata decided to travel to Dar es Salaam to visit her sister. The artist held her first solo exhibition in 1990 at the Nyyumba Ya Sanaa Gallery, in Dar es Salaam. In 1992, when the war in Mozambique ended, Reinata decided to return and settle in Maputo, where the Museum of Natural History offered her a space, which, since then, has functioned as her studio.

Reinata is considered one of the most important female artists on the African continent. The artist has received numerous awards and her works are represented in various institutions such as the National Museum of Mozambique, the Museum of Ethnology of Lisbon, the United Nations headquarters in New York, and the Modern Art collection of Culturgest, in addition to numerous private collections around the world. She held solo and collective exhibitions in Mozambique, Portugal, Switzerland, Tanzania, South Africa, Denmark, France, Italy, UK, and USA.