Official Opening: Gilleam Trapenberg
We are delighted to announce Currents, a new exhibition by Gilleam Trapenberg, opening on Saturday September 23rd between 6:00 and 9:00 PM at Galerie Ron Mandos.
Drifting through the currents of separate places, Gilleam Trapenberg has two worlds under his skin. From a studio in Amsterdam, his memories of an island upbringing are rose-tinted – just as a sun-soaked image of a palm-lined beach obscures a fuller picture of Caribbean life. Returning to the region at regular intervals, Trapenberg maps the textures of a changing territory through photographs – of the people he meets, the unassuming details that draw his eye, and the paradoxical landscapes of Sint Maarten and Curaçao: at once famous, misunderstood, seductive and in decline.
To attend the official opening, please RSVP by clicking on the button below.
Practical information:
Date: Saturday September 23rd, 2023
Time: 6:00 – 9:00 PM
Location: Galerie Ron Mandos, Prinsengracht 282, Amsterdam
ABOUT Gilleam Trapenberg
Born in 1991 in Willemstad, Curaçao
Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Born and raised in Curaçao, visual artist Gilleam Trapenberg (b. 1991) now lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Orbiting his homeland, his creative projects look closely at the fabric of Curaçao’s social landscape, probing at the island’s many paradoxes. He searches beneath the portrayals and tropes of Caribbean life that dominate (Western) media cycles, using the camera to create necessary counter-images.
Occasionally, though, Trapenberg is himself seduced by the allure of the exported picture- postcard; on European shores, nostalgia and longing take hold, perspectives drift, and memories of home are easily romanticised. For the artist, this experience of a perpetual limbo between two distinct places – connected by the fraught legacies of colonialism, enduring flows of goods and people, or even the mass tourism industry – is a growing focal point of his work.
A graduate of The Hague’s Royal Academy of Art, Trapenberg first moved to the Netherlands at 19 years old. In the years since, his works have been exhibited at institutions such as Foam Photography Museum and Stedelik Museum Amsterdam, whilst his first photobook – Big Papi – was published in 2017. He was the 2020 recipient of Foam’s Florentine Riem Vis grant and is one of five shortlisted artists for the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2023. The shortlisted works will soon be exhibited at London’s National Portrait Gallery.
