Marcel Pinas from Paramaribo, Suriname is one of the participating artists.
11JAN2015/20JUL2014
Unsettled Landscapes
SITE Santa Fe Introduces
A new biennial exhibition series that explores contemporary art from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego
July 20, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Opening Festivities July 17-19
SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas is a six-year commitment to a series of linked exhibitions with a focus on contemporary art and cultural production of the Americas. The exhibitions will take place in 2014, 2016, and 2018 and will be organized by a different team of curators, from locations throughout the Western Hemisphere. Through SITElines, SITE will establish a new programming hub called SITEcenter to generate connectivity between and during the exhibitions.
SITElines signifies a radical rethinking of SITE Santa Fe’s signature biennial exhibition, originally established in 1995. It represents a collaborative structure for planning its biennials, a vision for continuity between biennials, a commitment to community and place, and a dedication to new and underrecognized perspectives. This new multidimensional approach—together with a strong geographic focus—redefines SITE’s role at the forefront of biennial exhibition making and proposes new curatorial frameworks for biennials globally.
Unsettled Landscapes will look at the urgencies, political conditions and historical narratives that inform the work of contemporary artists across the Americas – from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego. Through three themes – landscape, territory, and trade – this exhibition expresses the interconnections among representations of the land, movement across the land, and economies and resources derived from the land.
“With Unsettled Landscapes, we build connections from Santa Fe to the rest of the Americas, we explore untold stories and perspectives, and we link between our past and our present,” said Irene Hofmann, Phillips Director and Chief Curator of SITE Santa Fe. “First Native American land, then a Spanish Kingdom, a Mexican Province, and an American Territory, all before statehood, New Mexico is a rich microcosm of the Americas. We are proud of the selection of artists participating in Unsettled Landscapes. These artists represent multiple generations and regions throughout the Western Hemisphere. Our show includes important new and existing works, 13 new commissions and several offsite installations. In addition, we have also included key works of art from previous decades that further expand the ideas of the show. Our aim was to curate a dynamic exhibition that shows how themes of landscape, territory and trade weave throughout the work of artists from every corner of the Americas.”
SITELINES 2014 TEAM
Curatorial Team:
Candice Hopkins, Curator (b. Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada; lives in Albuquerque)
Lucía Sanromán, Curator (b. Guadalajara, México; lives in Mexico City)
Janet Dees, Curator of Special Projects (b. New York; lives in Santa Fe)
Irene Hofmann, SITElines Director (b. New York; lives in Santa Fe)
Satellite Curatorial Advisors
Christopher Cozier (b. Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; lives in Port of Spain)
Inti Guerrero (b. Bogota, Colombia; lives in Costa Rica and Singapore)
Julieta Gonzalez (b. Caracas, Venezuela; lives in México City)
Eva Grinstein (b. Buenos Aires, Argentina; lives in Buenos Aires)
Kitty Scott (b. St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada; lives in Toronto)
SITElines Advisors
Ana Paula Cohen (b. São Paulo; lives in Sao Paulo and San Francisco)
Luis Croquer (b. El Salvador; lives in Seattle)
Douglas Fogle (b. Chicago; lives in Los Angeles) Rosa Martínez (b. Soria, Spain; lives in Barcelona)
Gerald McMaster (b. Saskatchewan, Canada; lives in Philadelphia)
Ryan Rice (b. Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada; lives in Santa Fe)
Osvaldo Sánchez (b. Havana, Cuba; lives in México City)
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
(Alphabetized by last name)
Shuvinai Ashoona | CAN
Jamison Chas Banks | USA
Raymond Boisjoly | CAN
Andrea Bowers | USA
Matthew Buckingham | USA
Adriana Bustos | ARG
Johanna Calle | COL
Luis Camnitzer | URY | USA
Liz Cohen | USA
Minerva Cuevas | MEX
Blue Curry | BHS | GBR
Agnes Denes | USA
Juan Downey | CHL
Gianfranco Foschino | CHL
Futurefarmers | USA
Anna Bella Geiger | BRA
Andrea Geyer | DEU | USA
Frank Gohlke | USA
Pablo Helguera | MEX | USA
James Hyde | USA
Deborah Jack | NLD | SXM | USA
Yishai Jusidman | MEX | USA
Leandro Katz | ARG | USA
Irene Kopelman | ARG
Miler Lagos | COL
Glenda León | CUB
Ric Lum | USA
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle | ESP | USA
Gilda Mantilla & Raimond Chaves | PER
Daniel Joseph Martinez | USA
Jason Middlebrook | USA
Ohotaq Mikkigak | CAN
Kent Monkman | CAN
Patrick Nagatani | USA
Florence Miller Pierce | USA
Fernando Palma Rodríguez | MEX
Marcel Pinas | SUR
Edward Poitras | CAN
Marcos Ramírez ERRE &
David Taylor | MEX | USA
Kevin Schmidt | CAN
Allan Sekula | USA
Melanie Smith | GBR | MEX
Charles Stankievech | CAN
Clarissa Tossin | BRA
Antonio Vega Macotela | MEX
The following essay is from this book on Marcel Pinas.
Copyright: Rob Perrée.
ARTIST, MORE THAN AN ARTIST
By Rob Perrée
While the sixteen-year-old Marcel Pinas (1971) was producing his drawings and watercolors at the Nola Hatterman Institute in Paramaribo, a bloody civil war was raging in his birthplace, the northeastern district of Marowijne, between the forces of army leader Desi Bouterse and the guerrillas of his former bodyguard, Ronnie Brunswijk.
Two realities existing side-by-side.
At that time the Nola Hatterman Institute was not particularly conservative perhaps, but it was still a traditional educational institution where talented students were taught the necessary skills in order to portray reality as truly as possible. The training was embedded in Western tradition. It was well on its way to being overtaken by the times. It was introspective. All but blind to what was happening outside the building, let alone over the border.
The Suriname Guerrilla War was in fact a clash between two egos that got out of hand. Desi Bouterse, an army officer who had proved he was not afraid of violence and Ronnie Brunswijk, a proud Maroon who, with the support of his people, had no intention of again being belittled by ‘Paramaribo’. The reason was money. Bouterse refused to pay Brunswijk for his services as personal bodyguard. A few years later the conflict was further heightened, when the cocaine trade began to form part of it. (1) The consequences were disastrous. Brutal and mindless violence claimed not only many military, but also dozens of civilian victims. Schools, roads, the national grid, hospitals, everything was razed to the ground. The unique Maroon culture was partially and in some places completely, destroyed. Marcel Pinas’ native village, Pelgrimkondre, was wiped out.
When ‘peace’ was declared more than six years later in August 1992, the authorities wrestled with their promises to make compensation for the damage and pain caused to the Maroons, but these promises would never go beyond the verbal. As was so often the case.
Five years later, in 1997, Marcel Pinas was a locally successful artist. His drawings and watercolors, often with indigenous themes, were popular. They came to him easily. The government gave him, together with Robert Enfield, George Struikelblok and Humphrey Tawjoeram, a scholarship to continue his studies at the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts on Jamaica. Here he was brought down to earth with a bang. It was now made very clear to him that if he was not prepared to deviate from his successful, but traditionally paved path, he may as well go straight back to Suriname. For the first time he was forced to reflect on what he wanted to say and express and to make his ‘modus operandi’ subservient to this.
The one reality was being forced to look the other in the eye.
From that moment on he realized that he would have to do something with his own culture. This was in danger of being lost forever. “ (…) your culture is your anchor.” (2) His work would have to give it a renaissance. What’s more he would have to give ‘his people’ back their cultural pride. “Interpreting the feelings of my own people, the Maroons; that’s what my art is about.” (2)
This would drastically change his work.
2.
Post Jamaica, the paintings Pinas produces are a marked departure from his previous competent, attractive and lighthearted work. The depiction of reality is abandoned. He goes in search of his own visual language.
The first thing one notices is the bright colors. They refer to the colorful decorations that the Maroons arranged in and around their houses, which in turn reflect the colors of nature in its many, rich hues. Since the colors from one period are darker than from another, his pre-2000 pictures are particularly somber, the mood under which the canvases are produced probably also plays a part. His recent paintings have an almost exuberant quality.
Pinas collects image elements on his canvases as if he is building collages. The images stand flatly side-by side, there is no perspective. Not randomly, since together they form a powerful, striking composition, however the mutual relationships are not immediately visible. They are often collections of symbols, ideograms and decorations that refer to Maroon culture and the N’dyuka culture in particular. Totems, sections of boats, characters from the Afaka script as used in his native district, but also decorative shapes as applied onto houses, tools or utensils, for instance. These decorations and ideograms may be somewhat inscrutable to an outsider, but they worked as an effective means of communication for the Maroons. Because the artist utilizes different techniques – he works with a brush, with a palette knife and with his hands -; because he incorporates small objects or parts of objects within the whole painting and because he sometimes uses traditional, checked fabric (pangi) as a background, his paintings acquire an extra characteristic of stratification. They sometimes assume the quality of an object, a wall sculpture.
On the one hand Pinas manages to give a face to an oppressed, traditional culture, on the other hand his paintings are reminiscent of the work of international colleagues such as a number of Latin American and Cuban abstract artists (for example Joaquin Torres Garcia and Alfredo Lam), Americans such as Bradley Walker Tomlin, Archile Gorky and Robert Rauschenberg and street artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat who is originally from Haiti. The way in which he mixes together high and low art, the way he turns decoration and ornament into content, could arguably place him within a Warhol tradition.
3.
I feel Marcel Pinas’ need to make installations comes from his need to tell his story with more urgency. An installation offers him both literally and figuratively more space and means to do this. He first encounters the medium while in Jamaica and he no doubt familiarizes himself with it during his many international trips and when he is at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. In Suriname art circles the installation is still viewed as an alien concept. In 2010 a critic from De Ware Tijd newspaper still doubted, in response to the ‘Paramaribo SPAN’ exhibition, whether such works deserved the classification as art. “We should be careful about the speed with which and the way in which this form of modern art is allowed to become part of our society.” (3)
Pinas begins hesitantly. When showing his paintings he places, here and there, an existing object. A decorated utensil or painted pieces of a dugout. They act as illustrations. Some time later they escape the context of the paintings and develop into autonomous works.
Remarkably Pinas’ first installations are set up outdoors. On principle he would rather reach the ordinary viewer. The people with whom he wants to enter into a dialogue. As part of the Carifesta of 2003 he replicates a traditional Maroon home including decorations, totems and utensils. In fact he is placing tradition in a public space where this tradition has largely been lost. It is this contrast that enables the installation to have the intended effect on visitors.
As part of 30 years’ independence he places 10 enlarged, traditional oil lamps, kokolampu, in the small park in front of Fort Zeelandia. They are arranged to resemble the Afaka script character for “we”. The warmth and energy of the lamps refer to the need for unity. The choice of location is actually a testament of the opposite, in 1982 the December Murders took place in Fort Zeelandia; surely no coincidence.
Another work is the totems, black-painted oil drums stacked one on top of the other and complete with Afaka characters on the approach road to Moengo, where the Maroon culture originates. They must protect the region against harmful outside influences. Moreover they act as symbols to remind people of their ancestors. The posts on the other side of the road ‘modeled’ with colorful fabrics, objects and paint serve a similar purpose. Every now and again visitors will spontaneously decorate them demonstrating that the artist knows how to stimulate, how to provoke thought.
It almost sounds disrespectful, but I cannot view the imposing monument that Marcel Pinas has ‘built’ in Moiwana as anything other than an enormous installation. It makes effective use of the space and enables the visitor to participate in encircling it, experiencing it. The monument commemorates the victims who fell there, on that spot in the Suriname Guerrilla War. Metal boxes of various proportions and heights, provided with a name and resting on a concrete plinth, surround a tapering totem. “Protect us”, the characters say. The site is delineated. The tranquility is breath-taking. The sound from the stones under your feet is shrill. Reminding you of your humility. Chris Cozier speaks of this work as “creating a new mapping of social history”. He rightly places it in the context of “the wider narrative of the Caribbean’s social and political history, and also at the boundary of where it meets with that of South America”. (4) With this work Pinas goes beyond displaying a threatened culture, this monument, this installation is both a tribute and an indictment at the same time. It accounts for the move to his other, more explicitly engaged work.
Marcel Pinas knows that in order to convey ‘his story’ it is important for his work to be exhibited in museums and galleries outside Suriname. Installations hold a dominant position in this. It strikes me that his outdoor installations mostly show the Maroon culture as it once was and could be again, in an accessible way and preferably for as many people as possible. His indoor installations seem to be more concerned with the causes for the loss and the way in which this process can be halted. In ‘Kibi Wi Koni’ from 2008 he places hundreds of bottles wrapped in colorful cloths in front of a black background, against which countless small black figures hang down. An Afaka character again lies hidden behind the apparently random arrangement of the bottles. The black figures are a concrete representation of slavery. The bottles illustrate on the one hand the decorative nature of the Maroon culture and on the other they contain the traditional medicinal fluids. Are they there to symbolize hope or to point out that more is needed to preserve a vulnerable culture? ‘Reconnection’, from the same year, comprises a collection of pink and pale blue checked plastic shopping bags, hanging or standing. The streets of many African countries are full of them. And those of Suriname. Video images of his trip to Cameroon, West Africa, can be seen in some bags. The artist uses this almost domestic image to connect the emotionally charged days of slavery to the present day and to explain his motives.
In ‘Wakaman’, an exhibition from 2009, Pinas shows, among other things, an open cupboard with kitchen utensils. Taken straight out of the context of a Maroon village. In one respect a symbol of hospitality and at the same time a crystallization of vulnerability. For in the cupboard is a video showing documentary footage of the water pollution caused by irresponsible gold mining activities. This water is literally the lifeblood of the Maroons.
The installation ‘A Libi’ from 2008 is a variation on this theme. Against a background of openwork wooden screens he makes a pile of skulls and bones. Dozens of alarm clocks have settled themselves in between. They announce their presence by going off at different times. Literally and figuratively disturbing the deathly hush. Is it another wake up call for the deadly effect of the pollution or is it already too late? Other installations – hanging rubber water skins filled with bones (‘San Tan Aba’, 2010) and bone-filled barrels (‘A De Kaba’, 2010) appear to indicate the latter.
Some symbols reoccur in different installations. Hundreds of ‘marked’ spoons for instance, hanging as evidence that the Maroons may be threatened but they are still present in large numbers (in ‘Un De Ete’, 2009 for example). The movement of the spoons can be interpreted as a form of communication.
An installation from 2005 shows his concern about the fate of young Maroons in particular having to grow up in an impoverished culture. It is actually a classroom with school desks. Characters are painted on the desks and small oil lamps are placed on them. The blackboard is half traditional blackboard and half painting. The Afaka characters on it are surrounded by colorful, decorative shapes. The ‘schoolmaster’ may be missing, but his presence can be sensed. An additional brief video documentary compensates for any missing element in later versions.
A number of installations are the direct result of campaigns or activities with young people/students from Moengo and the surrounding area. In an attempt to provide these youngsters with better footwear Marcel Pinas calls on them to hand in their ‘unhealthy’ flip-flops. Everyone handing some in receives new shoes (sponsored by private individuals). He piles the old shoes into a heap down which five empty shoes jauntily walk. He exhibits this work (with video) in Het Gemak in Den Haag in 2009. Art and reality could hardly approach each other more closely.
In another project he has a group of young students wrap dolls up in traditional black and white checked cloths. In having them do it themselves, he is trying to make them aware of the situation of many children: their opportunities restricted through their lack of rights, neglect and unhealthy lifestyle. He again gathers the result together in a pile, more refined now with the outside circle comprising dolls lying with their heads pointing down.
Students put script characters on most of the spoons used by Pinas in his installations, students pack the bottles from ‘Kibi Wi Koni’ and it is their catapults used in various works to symbolize the unequal battle that was fought. This fact gives these ‘interactive installations’ additional significance. It implicitly calls the authorship into question. The artist’s objective is more important than his stamp on the means to achieve that objective. The exhibition that he recently presented in French Guyana must also be seen in this light. Not only his own work, but also that of his students was shown here.
Pinas primarily concentrates on his own culture, but the themes that he addresses here transcend local interests. They are universal. The short documentary films he integrates into his presentations (about the gold mining and the Suriname Guerrilla War for example) could also have been made in other countries. The pollution caused by Western oil prospectors in Nigeria for example is similar to the gold rush mania in Suriname. The fate of children is a worldwide theme. (Black) cultures under pressure can also be found on other islands in the Caribbean and in various other countries in Africa. It is thus no surprise that Pinas’ work evokes associations with that of international artists such as Tirzo Martha on Curacao, Alex Burke on Martinique, Robert Diago on Cuba and David Hammons in the United States. To name but a few.
In his altar-like installations composed from existing material such as ‘Spirit of the Caribbean’ from 2005, Martha is speaking to his fellow countrymen about their responsibility to preserve its culture and not to be led astray by the pursuit of quick profits and disastrous mindless violence. In Burke’s work he returns to West Africa and shows how the West has turned Africans into zombies (‘The Spirit of Caribbean’, 2006). In fact he is calling on his compatriots to rid themselves of this negative, stupefying influence. Like Marcel Pinas, Diago uses the collage technique and existing materials. He portrays the position of black Cubans by means of graffiti-like ‘paintings’ and installations. Not always historically comparable to Surinamese Maroons, except with regard to status. At first sight David Hammons appears dissimilar since he comes from a country where the position of black people has improved considerably, but in recent years his attention has shifted more and more to Africa. “To save the soul of Black art”. (5) As part of the 2004 Dak’Art he organized a ‘Sheep Raffle’. In common with Pinas he prefers the direct approach to people (the lucky winner of the ‘Sheep Raffle’ went home with a sheep). While Pinas may favor the public space above the popular White Cube, Hammons has an outspoken, love-hate relationship with the museum circuit. In his view the (usually white, Western) curator is too much concerned with his own interests.
4.
Marcel Pinas’ most extensive and impressive installation is his ongoing Moengo project. Here he shows himself to be an artist who actually puts his engagement into practice. He reveals an artistry here that goes far beyond that of most of his colleagues. In the Moengo project he is the artist who adds entrepreneurship, teaching, designing, inspiration and organization to his creative remit.
The Tembe Art Studio lies at the heart of ‘Moengo’. Every day between 4 and 8 in the afternoon classes are taught in drawing, painting, sculpture, dance, jewelry design, music, etc. in this former Suralco (6) industrial building to students between the ages of 8 and 18 who live in the immediate vicinity. They are recruited from the pupils of neighboring schools in close collaboration with their teachers after Marcel Pinas and his permanent assistant, the artist Ken Doorzon, have held workshops.
The initial aim is to allow students to become familiar with and enthusiastic about subjects they do not encounter in their daily curriculum. “It is especially important for them to be engaged with creativity.” (7) The aim is to bring them to a point where they are able to make an ‘artistic product’ on their own, with which they can partially or completely earn their living. Exceptional talents are guided towards advanced training, either in Suriname or elsewhere.
The students are taught by experts from the immediate vicinity, by Ken Doorzon and Marcel Pinas and by guest artists. The latter are from an artist in residence program that is organized from The Netherlands with support from the The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. Dutch, Surinamese and international artists are eligible for this. They stay in a guesthouse in Moengo for three months. They can produce their own work during this time, however they are chiefly involved in giving classes to the TAS students. At the end the intention is for them to make an outdoor sculpture or installation together. This work will then form part of the TAS sculpture park, which will extend throughout the surrounding green landscape.
In order to reach students from more distant villages, small wooden settlements are built on site in the style of the traditional Maroon houses. The teachers travel to these villages and the buildings have sleeping accommodation if they wish to stay longer.
Because Marcel Pinas is and wishes to remain the spiritual father of this exceptional work of art, he is always looking for ways to generate income in order to cover the costs. Therefore a small restaurant forms part of the Moengo project. Therefore tourist trips are organized from Paramaribo to see and tour the various activities. Therefore Marcel designs jewelry and furniture in line with the traditional Maroon decorations, which he sells through an outlet in a city suburb. Therefore he has set up a rehearsal room and recording studio in the main building for (budding) musicians and therefore he is looking for opportunities to organize music and dance festivals that will attract hundreds of visitors to Moengo.
An artists’ archive should also turn the TAS into an institute for everyone interested in art from Suriname and the Caribbean. An exhibition space must make the visual fruits of all those involved accessible to a larger audience.
‘Moengo’ is fuelled both creatively and also with regard to content by exchange programs with similar projects elsewhere in the world. They make the extensive work of art into one that will never be finished and that will be permanently responding to the latest developments and opportunities.
‘Moengo’ is a direct consequence of the philosophy behind all Pinas’ works of art that I outlined earlier. (8) He has drawn his inspiration for the project from similar initiatives elsewhere in the Caribbean and in a number of African countries. Artists there are more likely to feel responsible for the artistic development of their surroundings, for the training and guidance of potential talents. It is also a project that arises naturally from living in a country not overindulged by all kinds of facilities and subsidy possibilities to support these facilities. In contrast to most of his Dutch colleagues, a Surinamese artist is forced to act as a business if he wants to survive.
5.
Marcel Pinas is in one respect an artist who has chosen in favor of his country, Suriname, and the culture of his native region, but also someone whose vision is much, much broader and who is open to and anticipates international developments. In his presentations in museums and galleries he shows himself as an artist who interprets his engagement into the recognized forms of the painting, the installation, the video and the sculpture. In his outdoor projects he gives a much broader interpretation to his art. For these, he does not allow himself to be restricted by the conventional codes, arrangements and genres. Here he is far more than the familiar artist. Here he is an artist who uses every possible creative means in order to get closer to his ideal.
The integrity and passion with which he does it turns this liberal and unique view of the profession into a logical one.
Paramaribo, Amsterdam, November 2010.
- In ‘De oorlog van de sergeanten. Surinaamse militairen in de politiek’ by Wim Hoogbergen and Dirk Kruijt, published in 2005 by Bert Bakker in Amsterdam, extensive attention is paid to this period;
- Kibri a Kulturu. Marcel Pinas, Benningbroek 2006, p. 8;
- Hariandi Todirijo in De Ware Tijd newspaper, 13 March 2010;
- Christopher Cozier. Notes on monuments and moments, on the Paramaribo Span blog, 19 February 2010;
- Manthia Diawara. Dak’Art 2004 Sheep Raffle, in: Salah M. Hassam, Cheryl Finly (ed), Diaspora, Memory, Place. David Hammons, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Pamela Z., Munich, Berlin, London, New York 2008, p. 138 thru 148;
- Suralco is a subsidiary of the American company Alcoa. It has been exploiting Surinamese Bauxite in and around Moengo since 1916. Because stocks are almost exhausted, the company is slowly winding down;
- Comment by Marcel Pinas during one of the many conversations I had with him on location there in October/November;
- See note 1.