The work on show is clearly the artist’s response to the covid-19 pandemic. The artist is among the few that have veered away from their usual themes in their works to tackle an immediate issue. He relays in the catalogue under the exhibition brief that when he was going through his sketch book at the beginning of the pandemic, he found sketches of figures wearing masks which he couldn’t remember where the inspiration came from.
At different times throughout the Black community’s history – from the Black Lives Matter movement, Apartheid or police brutality – art in all its forms becomes the mouthpiece of opposition. Thus it is all the more profound that Kwanzaa was born during the Civil Rights movement when the Black community used its voice and artistic power to protest again discrimination.
A Bakaïmo makes you at home in the bliss and intimacy of figures that would ordinarily have jarred or repelled. Even when he shows violence, it doesn’t repel or revulse.
We were having problems with art galleries, which were making it hard for artists to showcase their work. People who have been in the art industry longer were controlling the space in a way that locked artists out saying that you had to be in the industry for a certain number of years for you to showcase; because they had it tough coming up the ladder in their days and so they wanted younger artists to taste that struggle. That’s absurd.
Lunar – an exhibition in Paramaribo, Suriname – wanted to show the entanglement of peoples with different ethnical, cultural, and religious backgrounds.