Suneil Sanzgiri: An Impossible Address
An Impossible Address
Suneil SanzgiriHaunted by questions of disappearance, loss, and revolutionary struggle, An Impossible Address continues Sanzgiri’s examination of the life of the revolutionary Sita Valles and the bonds of solidarity that developed in the 20th century between India and Africa against the Portuguese empire. Combining 16mm film with digital animation, hand processing, and 3D scanning, the film is a kaleidoscopic and sonically vibrant experimental personal essay shot across Angola, Goa, and Portugal.
June 14, 2025
Opening reception: Friday, April 11, 2025 at 7pm
1286 Bloor St W TUE–SAT: 11AM–6PM SUN, MON: CLOSED
Mercer Union is located at street level and has an accessible ground-floor washroom, with clear, unobstructed pathways within the gallery. Please note that there are no automatic doors at the entrance or washroom.
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Images Festival is committed to providing an accessible festival and continues to work to reduce barriers to participation at our events. This year, we are implementing a COVID-19 policy to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission for all, and to prioritize the participation of people who are disability-identified, immunocompromised, or part of an otherwise vulnerable group.
The following guidelines will be in place: Self-Assessment: We ask that staff and participants screen themselves for COVID-19 before visiting the exhibition.
Brooklyn-based artist Suneil Sanzgiri’s research-driven practice considers questions of inheritance and diaspora in relation to histories of structural violence and anti-colonial struggle. His experimental film and video projects richly explore image-making, collective memory, and testimony. They are often in dialogue with the works of filmmakers, historians, poets, and activists. Beginning with an examination of his father’s family legacy of resistance to Portuguese occupation in Goa, India (1510–1961), Sanzgiri's recent works contend with the possibilities of transhistorical and cross-continental solidarity.
Commissioned for his solo exhibition, the artist’s new film An Impossible Address culminates four-plus years of research on the bonds of mutual struggle for freedom that developed between India and Africa against the Portuguese empire. The work is the final part of a series of two films that trace the connections between various liberatory figures in India, Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau. Central to the artist’s new film is the figure of Sita Valles, an Angolan-born doctor and revolutionary of Goan origin who joined the liberation movement against the Portuguese in Angola and who was subsequently disappeared there. In this experimental personal essay, her story both guides and haunts Sanzgiri, as he troubles and pulls at the threads of historical time to examine contemporary expressions of empire and the stakes of anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggle today.
A kaleidoscopic and sonically vibrant journey shot on location in Angola, Goa, and Portugal, An Impossible Address combines Sanzgiri’s signature visual language of 16mm film with digital animation, hand-processing, 3D scanning, and archival manipulation. Through this varied and material exploration of images, the film offers a study of the pitfalls of statecraft while grappling with the efficacy of both language and image in times of struggle, mourning, suffering, and action.
Suneil Sanzgiri: An Impossible Address is the tenth project developed through Mercer Union’s Artist First commissioning platform, and Sanzgiri’s first institutional solo exhibition in Canada. The film is commissioned by Mercer Union, Toronto; and EMPAC—Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York.
Suneil Sanzgiri
Suneil Sanzgiri is an artist, researcher, and filmmaker. Spanning experimental video and film, animations, essays, and installations, his work contends with questions of identity, heritage, culture, and diaspora in relation to structural violence and anti-colonial struggles across the Global South. Sanzgiri’s films offer sonic and visual journeys through family history, local mythology, and colonial legacies of extraction in Goa, India—where his family originates. His first institutional solo exhibition "Here the Earth Grows Gold" opened at the Brooklyn Museum in October 2023. His award-winning films have circulate widely at film festivals and art institutions across the world including International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival,Sheffield Doc/Fest, Doclisboa, Viennale, Camden International Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, Open City Docs, REDCAT, MASS MoCA, Wexner Center for the Arts, moCa Cleveland, Le Cinéma Club, Criterion Collection, and many more.
