The Tribune

By JEFFARAH GIBSON

Tribune Features Writer

jgibson@tribunemedia.net

THE LIQUID Courage Gallery’s first intercultural exchange this year took place last week when Belgian artist Jan Kempenaers was invited to exhibit his work.

During the event, Bahamian art enthusiasts had the opportunity to experience “art from a different angle”, said organiser Jacinta Barth.

Mr Kempenaers’ renowned ‘Spomenik’ series is composed of 26 medium format photographs of abandoned World War II memorials across former Yugoslavian territories.

The gigantic monuments (‘spomenik’ in Serbo-Croatian) were commissioned by former President Josip Broz Tito during the 1960s and 1970s and the contracts given to the best artists and architects of the time. After the dissolution of the Socialist Republic in the 1990s, the spomeniks were no longer wanted in ex-Yugoslavia’s new era of politics, so they were left to slow deterioration and fell into oblivion.

“There is a link between Jan Kempenaers’ spomenik series and the Bahamas that seemed relevant to me,” said Ms Barth.

“It is the question of how to deal with the remains of formal political power and its propaganda. Is it possible to dissociate the original intent from an object and reconsider it under a new light? Can monuments like the spomeniks lose their historic meanings through the artistic image and function as pure sculptures, as pure art? How do the Bahamas deal with this thematic after 40 years of independence?”

Before moving to the Bahamas in 2012, Ms Barth worked at Galerie Bob van Orsouw, a gallery for contemporary art in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2011, the gallery held a group exhibition in which three Belgian artists were featured and Mr Kempenaers was one of them. From that point Ms Barth said she fell in love with his work.

“To me, Liquid Courage Gallery feels like a fresh breeze in the local art scene, it is a space where both Bahamian and international artists can experiment with their artistic practice in an unconventional way and where an interdisciplinary as well as intercultural dialogue is encouraged,” said Ms Barth.

“When Tessa Whitehead, founder and curator of the gallery, asked me to volunteer as a guest curator for an exhibition, I gladly accepted.”

Ms Barth said there are several things about Mr Kempenaers’ work she felt Bahamian viewers could benefit from.

“I feel that art is the true international language that knows no boundaries. Especially today artists and their works travel around the world and cultural exchange is the rule rather than the exception. More and more Bahamian artists are exhibiting abroad – for example Tavares Strachan, John Cox, Heino Schmid, Blue Curry, to name a few – which I consider a very important and exciting thing. My wish was to present to the Bahamian public an artist from abroad, whose work would hopefully invite to broaden the intellectual horizon and to experiencing the art from a different angle. We had the chance to introduce Jan Kempenaers to the local artistic communities and to open an intercultural dialogue that, who knows, might one day be continued in Belgium,” Ms Barth said.

“Many visitors expressed their enjoyment in seeing a different approach to the photographic medium as well as admiring the beauty of the spomeniks that are largely unknown in the diaspora. What intrigues the public especially is the research the artist had to intake in order to find the forgotten monuments that are spread in the most remote places in formal Yugoslavia.”