RG Interview: Keishunda Curtis
Keishunda Curtis enjoys creating beauty from unwanted, unseen, or found materials. Considering humanity’s move into a metamodern era, an appreciation for the cycle of life and the delicate balance of old and new is honoured. She is also the creator of thehauteghetto, a pan-African social enterprise which uses black art and t-shirt couture to heal and create connections in the Atlantic World.
Her 2024 Bermuda Biennial artwork FAMILY, a work created with palmetto fronds, each suspended individually from the ceiling of the gallery with fishing line, is a representation of the importance of connection and partnership. It is also a play on dichotomies such as beauty and pain, trash and treasure, life and death. The installation is alive. Therefore, even in its state of death and disintegration, it will naturally move and change form with time.
On June 6, journalist Heather Wood profiled first-time Biennial artist Curtis. Excerpts from this article are shared below.
Click here to read the full article: “At the BNG: Keishunda, Haute Ghetto and Family”
Regarding her inspiration, the artist said to the Royal Gazette:
“I was at a friend’s house – a beautiful property surrounded by palm trees. They were really, really old ones, really tall; almost like a blanket of palm trees. I was swinging in a hammock, just micing and the idea just dropped in and I said, ‘I’m gonna recreate that.’”
She formed leaves into “roughly six clusters”, attached the name Family and submitted her work for consideration.
“It’s definitely a technique that I’ve developed – to hang them at different angles to create the illusion of how a palm naturally grows and then decomposes,” she said.
“It was just something about me in the hammock swinging in the sun; the Bermuda breeze and this blanket of palms. I knew that I wanted to recreate those scenes that we see on our island every day.”
It’s likely the idea sprang up because, at the time, she was “obsessed with palms” and the various colours they took on in different seasons.
She also spoke to the significance of being accepted into the 2024 Bermuda Biennial:
“This time I took a chance,” she said. “I knew Ebony Patterson’s work and her medium was unconventional as well. And so I knew it was a chance, possibly, that I’d be recognised. And luckily, I was,” said Ms Curtis, who took time off from her full-time job to create the work.
“It was the confirmation I needed to know that I was on the right track.”