“All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites”. [Marc Chagall]


In “A man not in the mood for salsa”, Curtis Talwst Santiago’s second exhibition with the gallery, the artist proposes a new collection of drawings and paintings, complemented by a series of dioramas and objects. Memory, ancestry, and diasporic imagination are intertwined in a joyful and playful manner. Central to Santiago’s oeuvre is the idea of entanglements shaping the consciousness of the postcolonial condition. Singer and musician, he reconnects with music as part of an identity that is transmitted from one generation to the next.

Fragments of childhood memories, feelings of yesterday yearning to be felt again, black & white masks strolling the streets of African metropolises (Parktown @2pm, driving with the windows down), dancing halls, jazz clubs (Afro-Sonic Mapping), haloed daemons, carnival traditional figures (Jab Jab, Midnight Robber, Dame Lorraine displayed in the diorama Queens Park Fete), are the recurring themes in these works. [Excerpt from the gallery press release]