Public Figure #1: Tramaine de Senna
3 July 2020 until 18 April 2021
For PUBLIC FIGURE #1, Tramaine de Senna created a bronze sculpture that is informed by identity politics, trompe-l’oeil sculptures, and pop culture. The title of the work, Figure of Color, allows de Senna to articulate the political scope of her work, and to express her love for color as a symbolic carrier of meaning and emotion. The title refers to the English expression “person of color,” which is mainly used in the U.S. to indicate non-white citizens. Much like in her previous work, de Senna explores the possible transformations and ambiguous manifestations of body, identity and form.
With Figure of Color, de Senna captures the multi-layered nature of identity, and the many forms we take on to show ourselves or to hide behind. In her own words:
“I see it in myself and with some people in my family that we construct appearances to blend or fit in, creating doubles or more.”
Who is then this figure the artist has added to the “residents” of the park? The figure seems hyper feminine –long flowing hair, wide skirts– yet remains unknown, facing away, only visible from the back. By allowing the appearance of the work to alter depending on our perspective and position, de Senna indicates that we are never just one thing alone. Who we are can never be grasped in just one look. The meaning and experience of the work, much like our sense of self, is always the result of internal and external changes.
This is the first time Tramaine de Senna uses bronze. Her oeuvre thus far mainly features plastics, textile, ceramic and composites. Still in the spirit of the title and its societal message, the artist set out using pigmented wax to alter and broaden the color scheme of the patina of the bronze. Putting wax layers over bronze sculptures helps to protect them from the elements, but here, they are also vital to the appearance of the “colorful” figure. With time, the wax layers dissolve and need to be reapplied, allowing for a new color palette to be chosen. In using wax as camouflage or make-up, the sculpture is able to transform and adapt to its surrounding, blending in, or standing out.
PUBLIC FIGURE is initiated and curated by Samuel Saelemakers, Curator Public Art Collection (Kunst in de Stad), Middelheim Museum.
For her solo exhibition at M HKA, titled MASTERBLASTER, de Senna presented a series of new works alongside a key selection of existing sculptures. Together, this constellation of works form a broader investigation of transitory aesthetics and selfhood. The forms that comprise de Senna’s works can be seen as acts of resistance to the contemporary demands for foregrounding one’s biography or one’s relations to established constituencies of identity, in favour of something much more ambiguous. Within these exhibited works, we find references as wide-ranging as the fluorescent colours and patterns of 1980s American pop, Flemish country-pop pioneer Bobbejaan Schoepen’s car, and oversized versions of colourful fishing flies originally made by a relative. Under the saccharin hues and textures, lye things unresolved, mutable and non-representational.
MASTERBLASTER/ IN SITU @ M HKA - MUSEUM VAN HEDENDAAGSE KUNST, ANTWERP (BE)
18 January - 23 August 2020
