A Walk in the Night

Photo courtesy Wendel Fernandez

“…Walk Into the Night was inspired by the history of the Cape Town Carnival and was intended to obliquely tell the story of the forced removals in Cape Town. It was billed an “invisible masquerade” – a processional shadow play, with various elements worn or carried by a multitude of participants, casting shadows onto horizontal and vertical planes along the itinerary of the procession, from hand-held white screens, to buildings, the sidewalk and the ground, participants and audience.”
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Catherine Matos Olivo: The Exploration of Self

( Guardia de Seguridad ) Trabajo = Trabajo / postcard edition 2008

” …In these photographs, the artist is caught in the act of some everyday scenario in the work life of an average person. These acts consist of different roles such as feeding a number of cats, working as a cashier at a store and piercing a client at a tattoo shop. I began to wonder if in fact it was an artwork. However, a closer look revealed the ideas behind the work and more importantly gave rise to many questions regarding art and its relationship with everyday life. At what point do we draw the line between art and everyday experience? What makes these photographs worthy of such reflection?… ”

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 ”Kibri a Kulturu”

Marcel Pinas; teaching the former motherland…

 ‘Un de ete’ (We are still here), 72.000 spoons and wire, 2009

There is still a lot left unsaid about the history that lies between the Netherlands and their former colony Surinam. Let alone that in Holland one often speaks of the Maroon people that live deep in the forests of the interior. The Municipality Museum of The Hague invited Surinam artist Marcel Pinas (b.1971) for an exhibition in their satellite space called ‘Gemak’ in the center of the residential city of the Netherlands. As a member of the Maroon community, the Ndyuka from the Eastern parts of Surinam, Marcel Pinas seems to be on a mission to tell the world about his culture, his people and his view on the distressing situations they have been through.
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“Yes we did”

Buffalo Soldiers

The émigré community of Little Haiti, located in the city of Miami is home to the largest population of Haitian immigrants of anywhere in the nation, many of whom – despite the U.S. government’s discriminatory immigration laws – escaped abject poverty, political anarchy and ravaged conditions in their homelands to reside in America, only to face a more perplexing case of racial and social inequality.  Those who were fortunate enough to dodge deportation and become citizens; flocked to the voting booths during last year’s election in hope of a change to the double standard that have victimized them for over 50 years (more…)

CRY SURINAM

In 1992 the Curacao born artist Felix de Rooy made the assemblage ‘Cry Surinam’. It comprises a cream coloured (glowing) oil stove with a book about Surinam on top of it, on top of that is a large bone and the head of a black Surinamese with widely gaping mouth. He is crying out. A parody of the Surinamese leaving the warmth of his own country for the chilliness of the Netherlands. A work that can stand, unintentionally, as a symbol for art in Surinam.

Why does contemporary art play such a modest role in the former Dutch colony? Why are there no Surinamese artists (with a few exceptions) to be seen at international exhibitions? Why is almost nothing written about it? Why are they hardly ever included in the collections of the major Dutch museums?
Is there any Surinamese art or does the art there not want to be Surinamese? Why is the colonizer’s culture still the dominant culture?
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Shades by Caroline “Bops” Sardine

“Every Island is Different – Every Island is the Same”

by Therese Hadchity

“Every Island is Different – Every Island is the Same” is presented as a collaboration between Caroline Sardine, or Bops (as she prefers), and Philip Nanton. Perhaps it is more precisely described as an ongoing relay, which started with Nantons lively interpretation of Bops’ painting ‘Sunnii-side-up’ for the group-exhibition “Words on Paintings” in 2008. Nanton followed up by inviting Bops, in turn, to design a cover for, and subsequently comment – in painting – on each of the mono- and dialogues he launched later that year as a CD titled ‘Island Voices’. It is a collaboration which, of course, prompts the viewer to ask whether the two artists have anything other than their Vincentian origins in common, and – if not, whether their interaction has been meaningful nonetheless.

Zemicon Gallery, Bridgetown,           Barbados, March 15th – 31st 2009. (more…)