Gallery MOMO Johannesburg is proud to present Exceeding Return, the first solo exhibition in South Africa by multifaceted artist Curtis Talwst Santiago.
Curtis Talwst Santiago's practice explores issues of transculturalism, memory and ancestry in the contemporary Diasporic experience. Santiago’s infinity series of miniature dioramas in reclaimed ring boxes consider the absence of certain narratives in dominant culture and draw on the tradition of storytelling to question the production of historical understanding. The ring boxes are unusually mobile artworks; between exhibitions they close and travel with the artist. Encased in structures that protect and transport precious objects through generations, the ring boxes become symbolic of oral historical practices. The lack of an immersive experience in viewing these works and their overt objecthood suggest the distance between dominant culture and the stories they hold.
In Exceeding Return, Santiago sets to explore his personal genealogy and ancestry. Exhibiting new works created in Johannesburg, Santiago upholds as much as he dismantles known methods of archiving and reliving history. As a Trinidadian-Canadian artist in Africa, his visual language expresses a distant yet urgent transcultural connection with his unknown ancestors, taking the form of erased historical figures resurrected in our present moment. He asks how one may pay homage to, or call upon ancestors and relics of the past, when the violence of colonial capitalism continues to denigrate and diminish their importance.
Curtis Talwst Santiago is a Canadian-Trinidadian artist currently working in Brooklyn, New York. He is a former apprentice of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, and has exhibited internationally in solo and group shows including at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Hunter College, Savannah College of Art and Design, Rachel Uffner Gallery and the Art Gallery of Mississauga. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Talwst is currently in residency at Gallery MOMO Johannesburg.
Gallery MOMO Johannesburg
Curtis Talwst Santiago l Exceeding Return
20 April - 27 May 2017
Opening: Thursday, 20 April at 18:00
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