Luísa Queirós: The Feminine Vision that Wove Caboverde’s Cultural Independence

By Su Duarte

Luísa Queirós was more than an artist—she was one of the principal weavers of Caboverde’s cultural identity. A painter, educator, textile artist, and activist, she transformed art into a political and communal act of creation. Through color, fabric, and storytelling, she gave visual form to the spirit of a nation learning to define itself after independence.

Born in Lisbon in 1939, Queirós graduated in Painting from the Escola Superior de Belas Artes de Lisboa in 1964, as a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation scholar. For more than a decade (1964–1977), she taught Visual Education in both Lisbon and São Vicente, blending her passion for art with a dedication to teaching and cultural formation.

In 1975, just months before Caboverde’s independence, she moved to Mindelo, bringing with her a vision of art as collective resistance and nation-building. Together with Manuel Figueira and Bela Duarte, she co-founded in 1976 the Cooperativa Resistência—one of the most significant cultural projects in Caboverde’s history. The cooperative sought not only to revive traditional weaving and textile art, but also to make creation accessible to local communities, connecting aesthetic expression to social and political empowerment.

Two years later, in 1978, Queirós was among the founders of the Centro Nacional de Artesanato, where she taught weaving, tapestry, and batik, and helped organize the collection and documentation of materials, techniques, and oral traditions. These initiatives laid the foundations for a lasting cultural heritage, bridging ancestral practices with contemporary creativity.

Her artistic expression was unmistakably figurative and vivid, full of emotion and movement. Critics described her works as “paintings that fill space with intense color and forms that guide the viewer through stories and feelings.” She also became known for her marionettes, illustrations, and book and record covers, always merging fine art with popular aesthetics.

In 1992, she and Bela Duarte created the gallery “Azul + Azul = Verde” in Mindelo—a space dedicated to exhibiting local art and promoting dialogues between tradition and experimentation. Throughout her career, Queirós embodied a feminine and political consciousness that challenged the silence surrounding women’s roles in art and in the national imagination. For her, every thread and brushstroke was part of a broader movement toward cultural sovereignty.

She once affirmed that governments must “see the culture and the arts of this people as an essential part of the whole that is the nation.” Her life was the living proof of that conviction: she helped build the very institutions that preserved Caboverde’s creative identity and elevated its crafts to national symbols.

Luísa Queirós passed away in Mindelo on June 22, 2017. Yet her colors continue to breathe across the islands—in the looms she revived, in the classrooms she shaped, and in every young woman who now knows that art, too, is a form of freedom.

“To weave is to remember, to teach is to resist, and to create is to belong.”