Bertina Lopes spoke a hybrid language – a mix of Portuguese and Italian – not formally developed but dictated by the urgency of expressing her individuality, embodying in her work a militant defense of the roots and ancestral identity of her country of origin, Mozambique, as well as the entire continent, in an anti-colonialist and pan-African sense. Alternating synthesis and animism with modernist geometric forms or universal spatial abstractions, she expressed the vitalism of those who live as outsiders, at home or as migrants, with a powerful identity.
