Quincy Gario. Photo: Annemarija Gulbe Quinsy Gario
Quinsy Gario is a performance poet, artist and educator from Curaçao and St. Maarten. His artistic work centers on decolonial remembering and instituting otherwise. He is a member of the artist collective Family Connection, co-founded in 2005 by his mother Glenda Martinus, and regularly exhibits and performs with his family members. Gario’s most well-known work Zwarte Piet Is Racisme (2011–2012) fundamentally altered the racist Dutch tradition.
Gario did his undergraduate studies in theater, film and television studies and minored in gender studies and postcolonial studies at the Utrecht University. He is a graduate of the Master Artistic Research of the Royal Academy of Art The Hague. He is a 2017 Humanity in Action Detroit Fellow, 2017/2018 BAK Fellow, 2019/2020 APASS alumnus, 2020/2021 Sandberg Institute Critical Studies Fellow and a recurring participant of the Black Europe Body Politics conference series from 2012 until its end in 2018. Gario received among others the Royal Academy Master Thesis Prize 2017, the Black Excellence Award 2016, the Dr. Steven Engelsman Grant 2016, the Amsterdam Fringe Festival Silver Award 2015, The Kerwin Award 2014 and the Hollandse Nieuwe Theatermakers Prize 2011. His work has been shown in among other places Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), MACBA (Barcelona), Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), National Gallery of Art (Lithuania), De Appel (Amsterdam), MHKA (Antwerp), TENT (Rotterdam), Göteborgs Konsthall (Gothenburg), Tallinn Art Hall (Tallinn) and EVA (Limerick).
He is currently also a PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the research project Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums. His research is focused on Dutch Afro-Caribbean contemporary artists’ engagement with Dutch Afro-Caribbean heritage in Dutch collections.
Agenda
Symposium: Shapeshifters
Day-long symposium addressing the ethical and cultural implications of collections built through colonial looting and exploitation
Amsterdam Assembly: Letting Go of Having to Speak All the Time
A gathering and thinking space for activists, artists, scholars, and other cultural practitioners
A conversation on: The Power of Doing Nothing
Online panel with Flavia Dzodan, Quinsy Gario, and Joy Mariama Smith
Book launch: When we speak about colonisation
On the occasion of the recent publication by Faassen and Verdijk, and in the context of the running show 'A Blueprint for Toads and Snakes' by Sammy Baloji
Black art with Quinsy Gario - Read My World
A series of talks and performances as part of the Read My World festival.
VENUS: the anti-hero hero
An interactive programme that explores the historically violent imageries surrounding Venus.
BE.BOP 2014 - Spiritual Revolutions & 'The Scramble for Africa'
Curated by Alanna Lockward.
Museumnacht: Atelier Revolutionair
Programme with lectures, interventions, music and performances.
Close Encounters of the Caribbean Kind II. On Decolonial Aesthetics and European Blackness
Lecture and round table discussion in the context of the exhibition Who is more sci-fi than us?
Close Encounters of the Caribbean Kind
Artist talk around the exposition Who More Sci-Fi Than Us?
Magazine
Slavery /
Shared Heritage / Colonial history / Contested Heritage /
Podcast Series: Black Togetherness
Museology / Shared Heritage / The living archive / Colonial history /
Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums
Caribbean / Colonial history / Migration /