Blood Memory by Kwesi Abbensetts
“…bound to my identity, race, and being part of the black diasporic experience.”
Kwesi Abbensetts is an Intuitionist.
KWESI ABBENSETTS: My process of creating is led by an intuitive and unconscious calling. It relies on waiting, spontaneous inspiration, and feelings. My process places trust in randomness and moments of happenstance instead of trained formalities of art making and practice. My work relies on memory information and the influence of space/environment to create and influence my work, a call and response.
My work is also tightly bound to my identity, race, and being part of the black diasporic experience. My work is about this experience and its abstract and literal interpolations. And consequently my work and subjects become a rendered celebration of my rich culture. My work is concerned with what I call “Revisionary Self Appropriation.” It is a work that seeks to build new context and representation of self and not relying on direct posited contemporary references. It relies on “blood” memory, invention, and experimentation via the process of intuitive force performance.
The following photo essay is comprised of pieces from several bodies of work.
+ + +
Kwesi Abbensetts (b. Guyana, 1976) is a New York based Photographer/Visual Artist and 2016 NYFA Fellow who hails from South America off of the Corentyne coast of Guyana. He is a self taught visual artist, who started playing with the medium of photography in 2006. His work has since matured, shooting portraiture, fashion, art photography and experimental short films. His photography work stands firmly within the modern contemporary aesthetic, enhanced by his West Indian origins – the colors, the sun and the vibrancy.