Kenyan artist to talk, display at CCA7 today

Pieces from Fernandes’ collection “Anomilia” will be on display at CCA7, Fernandes Compound, Eastern Main Road, Laventille. His collection is made up of a series of digital drawings rendered through Adobe illustrator that depict creatures that are half animal and half African artifact. According to Fernandes the “bizarre beasts create hybrid creatures that take on the appearance of being from an unknown place, because we do not know them.

They give off the sense of having survived from a long time ago that they have come from a futuristic planet.

“They live in an oscillating space, being one thing and then another. They become representative of the mythical, the exotic and the primitive. They ask the questions, what are these animals and where have they come from?”

Fernandes describes his work as “multi-disciplinary, examining issues of cultural displacement and migration through installation, painting and drawing.”

He said that “his current body of work investigates how tourism’s sensationalised vacations such as safaris, contribute to the exploitation of societies and cultures and their subsequent transformation into forms of entertainment.”

He added that “his work represents the investigation of the concept of authenticity as an ideological construct that both dominant and subordinate cultures use to their own ends.”