Remy Jungerman is taking a new step in his oeuvre with What the River Says. For the first time, he is moving away from two-dimensional work. A focus on Western Modernism has shifted to the background and Jungerman is now directing his attention towards the lives of the Surinamese Maroons and other cultural expressions of the diaspora that emerged from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Every history is recorded from a specific perspective. Often, these perspectives and assumptions are so ingrained that we overlook the underlying ideological implications. Usually, there is little room for other stories and viewpoints. Remy Jungerman (Suriname, 1959) aims to change that with his work. He wants to challenge and broaden our entrenched assumptions with stories that, until recently, had no place in the Western canon.
Jungerman tells stories about the Maroons, the Surinamese group from whom he descends on his mother's side. This group escaped slavery and managed to keep the Dutch at bay deep in the Surinamese jungle along the Suriname River. In this isolation, the Maroons preserved their own culture and religion, the Winti faith.
"When we talk about geometric abstraction, we immediately think of Piet Mondrian and De Stijl, but Remy connects his work to the geometric patterns of the shoulder cloths of the Surinamese Maroons. For him, the history of geometric abstraction goes much further back," explains Lars Been in the gallery.
The work that Jungerman presented on behalf of the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 2019 focused on a dialogue between 20th-century Modernism and the geometric patterns worn by the Maroons, patterns that have been prevalent in West Africa for centuries. After the Biennale, Jungerman’s career really took off. In 2022, he had a solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and that same year, won the Heineken Prize. The prize money allowed him to further research the Maroons.
With the work in What the River Says, Jungerman is starting a new chapter in his oeuvre, both in form and content. Modernism has given way to the cultural expressions of the Maroons. In What the River Says, he focuses on the cloth shoulder wraps worn by the Maroons during Winti rituals, the pimba (white kaolin clay) applied to the body during rituals for cleansing and the pouring of libations to connect with ancestors.
A new form Jungerman explores is the quilt. Last year, he spent time at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum. At the Met, he saw Pettway quilts from Gee’s Bend, a plantation on the Alabama River, for the first time. The town is now called Boykin. The residents are direct descendants of the enslaved people who worked on Joseph Gee's cotton plantation.
Jungerman created a quilt with Ms Mary Ann Pettway and Ms China Pettway. The quilt lies on an elevated platform in the middle of the gallery and consists of countless pieces of fabric with patterns: red-white, yellow-black, green, Vlisco fabrics with scale patterns. "All the fabrics have meaning and refer to the Winti belief. The colour combinations represent certain gods. Remy’s choice of materials always relates to his background," says Lars Been.
An important aspect of the Winti belief is ancestor worship, which makes the creation process a spiritual endeavour for Jungerman. "My ancestors are constantly whispering form and attitude in my ear. As I work in my studio — tearing textile into small pieces, rubbing clay over the textile, pouring layers of liquid kaolin and carving on the surface of the clay — I am constructing spaces that I hope viewers will engage with on a spiritual level, feeling the touch of the hands that made these works, both my own and those of my ancestors."
The textile pieces Jungerman now uses are much smaller than before. Whereas they used to cover the entire stretcher, they now measure around 10x10 cm. Jungerman secures them on a piece of fabric, essentially creating small works by treating each one individually, as explained above. He then sews the square components back together, resulting in a collage-like image with its own tension and rhythm.
Not only is the clay applied individually to each component, creating some relief between them, but the white clay does not cover evenly everywhere. Darker fabrics, for example, leave an underdrawing and the whole is interrupted by scratches in the clay or open spots where the fabric suddenly becomes visible. The kaolin clay also refers to the Winti faith, whose ceremonies include applying the clay to the body during purification rituals.
In work that Jungerman created this year, such as Pimba AGIDA SUSA VI, it is evident that the deconstruction and reconstruction of the cloths are part of Jungerman’s search for a three-dimensional approach to geometric abstraction. In this work, he deepens squares, makes them protrude or folds them to create diagonals. Jungerman even completely departs from the flat surface in the front room of the gallery, where we see a totem consisting of four cubes with paint dripping down the sides. A reference to the libations offered to ancestors in the Winti faith or perhaps a reference to Jackson Pollock?
What the River Says is on view until 10 November at Galerie Ron Mandos in Amsterdam.