Project: Fatu Bangi, by Roberto Tjon A Meeuw

Roberto Tjon A Meeuw installing his fatu bangi on the front lawn of the Surinaamsche Bank building in Paramaribo


A fatu bangi — literally, “fat bench” — is a piece of roadside furniture commonly found along major thoroughfares in Suriname, especially outside Paramaribo. Often made from rough planks or pieces of scrap wood, the fatu bangi is a location for relaxation, conversation, observation.

Roberto Tjon A Meeuw’s SPAN project is a series of fatu bangis positioned in and around the chief SPAN exhibition venue, the Surinaamsche Bank building on Henck Arron Straat.

Christopher Cozier writes:

Roberto’s fatu bangi becomes part of our vernacular visual vocabulary. He articulates this through his T-shirts and through his found-object sculpture.

The artist works with what we either discard or disregard. His work taunts or makes fun of our self-conscious and conservative tendencies; our limited notions of respectability and self-important seriousness. A fertile tension between the formal and the informal plays out in his work.

On the surface, this may look like good old boy-fun, prankish and irreverent, but on another level it is a serious investigation of the relationship between our ideas of artistic expression and the popular.

On my first visits to Suriname, I was taken by the design of these benches and the way they allowed people to spend the evenings looking out at the cars and other people going by. Is sitting on this bench sleepy indolent native behaviour, or is this active and agentive identification and engagement of community and the world around us?

I was intrigued by their modest and practical design. But the last place one would expect to see a fatu bangi is downtown in front of the bank. Placing a fatu bangi here relocates the bank and the bench. It talks about the bank’s relationship to contemporary experimentation and enquiry and the everyday. It alters the value we place on this type of bench by seeing it in this location. One looks out at the world from a fatu bangi. Maybe also to be span.

Look out, Rotterdam.

Conversation: “positive tension”

Paintings in the Surinaamsche Bank conference room: left wall, Waterfall (1976-1977), by Paul Woei, oil on canvas, 300 x 170 cm; back wall, Wooden House (no date), by Jules Chin A Foeng, oil on canvas, 222 x 142 cm


By Chandra Van Binnendijk

De Surinaamsche Bank, with its 350 employees, is the largest commercial bank in Suriname. It opened its doors to the public on 19 July, 1865, and celebrated its 145th anniversary in 2010. The head office is supported by five branch offices and two agencies in the Nickerie and Marowijne districts.

Visual art has always been an important aspect of the bank’s culture. Five years ago, when DSB celebrated its 140th anniversary, it presented its own art collection to the public — a most valuable collection which is praised unanimously by art lovers — by holding an exhibition under the title Visible and publishing an art catalogue (author/editor Chandra van Binnendijk) with the same title.

DSB is one of the main sponsors of Paramaribo SPAN, and the bank’s headquarters on Henk Arron Straat in Paramaribo is the central exhibition venue.

From a conversation with Mr. Martin Loor, Chief Financial Officer, DSB:

“With this art event we want to express that this bank has its roots in the community. Through art we want to give back to the community on the occasion of our anniversary. Art is an expression and a reflection of how a community thinks and feels. In our case it reflects the fine complexity and the fine tolerance of our society.

“I am most curious! [Paramaribo SPAN] is very new and positively challenging. The challenge is one of the beautiful elements of this exhibition.

“I find the name of the exhibition appropriate in so many different ways. Just this week we had a meeting with all the department managers, and we discussed the many meanings of the word ‘span’. The word itself also has something elusive, and that makes the whole event even more fun.

“I have no idea what to expect, there is positive tension in the air!”




In the Surinaamsche Bank reception area: Two Women with Headscarves (no date), by Nana Liem , acrylic on canvas, 94 x 63.5 cm

Schedule: Paramaribo SPAN opening weekend

The main component of the Paramaribo SPAN project is an exhibition of contemporary art opening on Friday 26 February, 2010, and running until 14 March. (A version of the exhibition will run later in the year at the TENT gallery in Rotterdam.)

The main exhibition space is the garden and villa behind De Surinaamsche Bank’s landmark building on Henck Arron Straat in Paramaribo, but artists’ projects will also be shown at other venues and in public locations around in the city. Paramaribo SPAN features works by more then twenty Surinamese artists and several Dutch artists who have participated in the ArtRoPa exchange.

The opening weekend includes a series of formal and informal events where the artists, curators, members of the SPAN team, and visiting critics will be present. Among the main events:

Thursday 25 February
= 10.30 am–12 pm: press preview, De Surinaamsche Bank (DSB) garden

Friday 26 February
= 7.30–11 pm: official opening, DSB garden

Saturday 27 February
= 10 am–1 pm: "Art Fatu", Readytex Art Gallery
= 1.30–4 pm: Art Conversations 1: An Afternoon in the Garden (discussion among visiting critics), DSB garden
= 7-9 pm: visit to Adji Gilas project, by Dhiradj Ramsamoedj, Kwatta

Sunday 28 February
= 9 am–6.30 pm: visit to Moengo, hosted by Marcel Pinas
= 7–11 pm: I in the Sky project, by Plu de la Fuente, Baba and Mai Square

(We will post a complete schedule closer to the SPAN opening.)

Conjunction: classical details

By Nicholas Laughlin





Concrete columns and statuary on display on the outskirts of Paramaribo; photo by Christopher Cozier, 15 December, 2009


Displays of architectural components — balustrades, window-frames, garden bird-baths — are not an uncommon sight on the outskirts of many Caribbean cities, outside hardware and construction-supply stores. But the array of concrete columns and reproduction statuary photographed by Christopher Cozier on the outskirts of Paramaribo is particularly impressive. The columns seem to include all the orders known to classical Greek architects — versions of the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian — and the row of statues features concrete reproductions of the Venus de Milo and Michelangelo’s David, an Art Nouveau caryatid, and a rearing horse, all carefully lined up on a pair of stepped ledges at the side of a dusty road. Their pristine white finish is marred only by a blotch of spray-painted black on David’s crotch, at once drawing attention to and obscuring the anatomy. A vandal’s prank, or a businessman’s gesture of modesty?

Intended to dress up the façade of a prosperous mansion, or raise the style of a more humble bungalow, these concrete objects suggest aspirations of grandeur that may seem out of place in Paramaribo’s suburbs. But looking at the photographs I was reminded of the marble bust — probably of nineteenth-century provenance, and imported from Europe — which I’d earlier seen outside the ramshackle estate house at Alliance, a plantation on the Commewijne River east of Paramaribo. Perched on a baroque stone pedestal, now weathered and streaked with moss, the Alliance bust tells a story of the social and cultural aspirations of another generation. And the concrete columns photographed by Cozier on Jozef Israelsstraat are less “authentic” but certainly more durable versions of the classical details rendered in white-painted wood on the façades of many nineteenth-century buildings in central Paramaribo. But whereas the faux-classical concrete decorations on a modern mansion will likely endure until the householder’s tastes change, the façades of Paramaribo’s heritage buildings, recognised by UNESCO and protected by law, require restoration and renewal every few decades. In the tropics, wood decays fast, even under a coat of white paint.




Marble bust outside the old estate house at Alliance; photo by Nicholas Laughlin, 17 April, 2009



Detail of the façade of the Hof van Justitie in Paramaribo; photo by Nicholas Laughlin, 28 June, 2009

Topography: minibus, Waterkant

Painting on a minibus waiting to collect passengers. Photo by Nicholas Laughlin; 24 June, 2009

Project: Jeroen Jongeleen’s “culture hacking”

“Site & Content Specific Art (Practice)”, graffiti by Jeroen Jongeleen in the Palmentuin, Paramaribo; photo courtesy the artist


The Rotterdam-based artist Jeroen Jongeleen, one of the participants in the ArtRoPa exchange programme, spent several weeks in Paramaribo in late 2007 and early 2008. Here the Dutch critic Siebe Thissen describes Jongeleen’s work in Paramaribo, in an excerpt from a longer essay in the Paramaribo SPAN catalogue.

Jeroen Jongeleen’s work in Paramaribo staged an encounter between street images and the visual arts. Jongeleen plastered graffiti slogans in the city where he had spent his youth. With not a little irony, he sprayed the words “art in public spaces” on a neglected little concrete structure in the Palmentuin [Palm Gardens] — a nocturnal haunt for Paramaribo’s junkies.



“Buiten Kunst uit Rotterdam” (“Public Art from Rotterdam”), graffiti by Jeroen Jongeleen in Paramaribo; photo courtesy the artist


Jongeleen also added a monumental feature at the corner of Wanicastraat and Sophie Redmondstraat, close to the US Embassy. UNESCO may have declared Paramaribo’s old, well-preserved city centre a world heritage site, but small wooden workers’ houses, many of which have been neglected, do not enjoy that protection. Jongeleen painted one of those unlisted houses completely white, with window frames in light blue — the colour of UNESCO. His action introduced a new element into the visual culture of Paramaribo: “culture hacking”, or the power of art to react to and comment on the surrounding visual culture.



Painted house at 59 Wanicastraat; photo courtesy the artist

Notes: other canvases

By Christopher Cozier



Kali tattoo, by Pierre Bong a Jan; photo courtesy the artist


The idea of Pierre Bong a Jan using skin as another canvas coincides with the painted decorations on Paramaribo minibuses, reaching out to a larger contemporary public and extending the dialogue about visual production.

The buses and the tattoos, like t-shirts and angisa headkerchiefs, speak with and about the concerns of people living in this space, and also operate far away from traditional art spaces. As suggested by the art historian Kobena Mercer, they become “viral” in their vernacular forms, threatening to infect our much-cherished ideas about “ART”. It’s not just about surfaces, but also about iconography — the meeting point where traditions of body adornment and unlikely mythological confluences play out, as new identities and sensibilities are produced. Where else can a calendar Kali, Botticelli’s Venus, and the stylizations of Vargas or Frazetta meet, if not in Paramaribo?




Handmade tattoo machine; photo courtesy Pierre Bong a Jan


Tapping into a family tradition of ingenuity and self-determination, Bong a Jan has also made his own working tools and devices. His plan to do a live tattoo on the opening night of the SPAN exhibition engages my interest in the less declarative and more provisional implications of exhibitions as events. The artist, within his or her experimental pursuits, creates critical moments that seek to open up or expand our sense of what is possible or expected.

Like the home-manufactured confectionery of Ellen Ligteringen or George Struikelblok’s caged broilers, the event staged or generated is an experience that can live in our mind’s eye, like an encounter with an image — and can be internally processed, devoured, refashioned, and re-enacted. It is a proposal, a question in an ongoing visual conversation. Our presence or response makes or is an active element of the work, as much as we are also incorporated or co-opted within this moment.




Pierre Bong a Jan’s sketchbook, in his tattoo studio; photo courtesy the artist

Seen: Masters of the Game, by Jurgen Lisse

Masters of the Game from Jurgen Lisse on Vimeo.

Masters of the Game is a short video piece by filmmaker Jurgen Lisse, featuring the nimble footwork of a group of young street football players. Using camerawork and editing techniques familiar from music videos, set to a hard-driving soundtrack, it is an artifact of an international urban sensibility with various Paramaribo landmarks as backdrops.

Lisse writes:

“A few boys came to me and asked if I could help them with an intro for their team, Streetskillerz. These talented boys are still in school, and besides school they enjoy and challenge each other with passion and the quickest moves.”

See more of Lisse's short video works at Vimeo.

Concept: "suicide" installation, by Ravi Rajcoomar

Ravi Rajcoomar's SPAN project proposal is an installation commenting on a painful social issue. He explains:

Suicide is a worldwide problem that seems to have no end. Some people take their own lives with hate, then you have terrorists who do it to kill others, and some do it to solve their problems. In recent years there have been many suicides and suicide attempts in Suriname — this is maybe one of the countries with the most suicides. It happens all over the country, but especially in Nickerie.

Everybody keeps talking about this. It got me thinking about what I could do as an artist to get people to reconsider their thoughts of suicide. My idea is to create an installation to encourage discussion.

It will be large box made out of triplex safety glass, with human silhouettes cut out, so you can easily walk through. More silhouetted figures will hang from the roof above. The interior walls will be covered with text, accompanied by a sound installation. The exterior will be bare white.

Reading: on stereotypes, metaphors, and dreams

By Nicholas Laughlin



Sheets of linoleum printed with maps of French Guiana, on sale in Cayenne. Photo by Nicholas Laughlin; 8 April, 2009


[Excerpted and adapted from “Guiana Dreams”, an essay written for the Paramaribo SPAN catalogue. Read the full version here.]


Every place on earth is haunted by stereotypes. But some are more haunted than others, and some places are more tenaciously bound by the metaphors and fictions spun around them.

For the better part of five centuries, the region of South America that we call the Guianas has been tethered in the imagination of the West as a geography to be explored and exploited, endured and adventured in, but not as a place to truly make a home. The Dutch and the English built plantations and ports in their Guiana colonies. The French built prisons. Desired raw materials were shipped out, and undesirable men shipped in. That societies evolved here — hybrid communities where cultural elements from four continents collide and collude — was an accident of history.

Now we find ourselves in what we like to call a postcolonial age, having exchanged flags in a series of midnight ceremonies over the past forty years. But capital-I Independence has not made us less reliant on global economies, whether of finance, trade, or ideas. We depend as much as ever on foreign dollars and attention. And the world’s regard still filters through a persistent swaddle of stories we did not tell, images we did not make.

The predicament might be summarised in a question quoted by the literary scholar Mary Louise Pratt, in Imperial Eyes, her study of the ways travel literature has portrayed Latin America and Africa for European readers. How does “a destination for others” — a place that has been described and depicted mostly by others from elsewhere, with their own missions and prejudices — a place like Suriname, like the Caribbean — become “a home for the self”, for the real women and men who are born here, raise families, and work to achieve safe and comfortable lives? This big question touches on matters of political self-determination, cultural self-assertion, personal self-comprehension, and is specially urgent for those — our artists, our writers — whose labour it is to imagine new stories to replace the old ones that have trapped us.




Sign welcoming visitors to Lethem, Guyana, on the border with Brazil. Photo by Nicholas Laughlin; 7 August, 2005


Artists everywhere grapple with doubts about relevance and audience and income. But in Suriname, in the Caribbean, the smallness of our societies intensifies the struggle. The artist’s options can appear vexing. Fall back on local social networks offering patronage and flattery? Adopt the vocabulary and gestures currently fashionable in foreign academies, and try to catch the eye of a visiting curator? Resort to approved motifs of ancestral heritage and play the role of the “intuitive” or “primitive”, hoping to be recognised as authentically exotic?

Initiatives like ArtRoPa, arranging working exchanges between artists in Suriname and the Netherlands — or like the Wakaman Project, instigating creative partnerships between Surinamese artists at home and abroad — or like Paramaribo SPAN, building a platform to share the work of artists in Suriname with audiences elsewhere — seem to offer the possibility of stepping past the limits of a small place, the chance to infiltrate the wider world with our own metaphors and hopes. But, inevitably, old fictions intervene, and artists often find themselves and their audiences snarled in preconceptions of what Surinamese (or Caribbean) art should look like, what its acceptable subjects might be, how it should “read”, what it could mean.

An artist’s job is to create something meaningful — an object, an experience, a sensation — in the space where personal vision and ambition meet opportunity and social circumstance. The dimensions of that space are constantly shifting, and one way to define an artist’s success is by the range of the creative territory he or she is able to inhabit. For artists from parts of the world that have long been “destinations for others”, the space of potential action, and the ways their work can be received and understood, are bounded by the old imaginary geography. Before we can cross that boundary — or shift it, or erase it — we must both see it and recognise it for what it is: a confining fantasy of the exotic with a long history and a heady allure.

Metaphors have alarming longevity. The New World, five centuries later, is still “new”. To kill a story requires a more powerful story, a more resonant fiction. And re-charting the domain of our hopes and fears — our creative space, our “home for the self” — whether we give that home the name of a nation or a region, Suriname, Guiana, the Caribbean — demands immense and sustained feats of imagination. It demands that we invent new images and new languages to describe and debate our own real world, its scope and its span. It demands powerful and resonant new dreams.




Patriotic footwear, Paramaribo. Photo by Nicholas Laughlin; 29 June, 2009