The Suriname Chronicles: Part IX

The Moengo Festival of Visual Arts was too big to shoehorn into just one post.  Before the festival officially kicked-off, the children of Moengo (some of whom helped Terry and I with our project Colloquy) painted the streets leading from the Tembe Art Studio to the Moengo Museum of Art.

Here is Orkney talking with Terry.

Let the painting begin..........!

An American college student and a Dutch college student who were both having internships at their respective embassies for the summer.  A fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime experience for them both.  I wish I had been smart enough when I was in college to have cultivated such a profound opportunity.

Terry Rathje and Melissa Quartell inspecting the street painting.

Ingrid Hill possibly warning Terry that there was some shady character behind him with a camera?

After the streets of Moengo were painted, we gathered around as Marcel Pinas officially kicked off the 2015 Moengo Visual Arts Festival.

Some shots of the crowd as they worked their way towards the Tembe Art Center.

A bizarre situation unfolding when I am taking a picture of Lih-Lan Wong while Klaar Van Der Lippe is taking a picture of me.  Elke D'Haenen is watching this whole thing go down from a safe distance.

In addition to the Tembe Art Studio, there were several other venues in Moengo that had artwork on display.

Check out Tirzo Martha's work.

Lode Demey and Elke D'Haenen worked with a whole bevvy of students to create an installation that bears witness to the disappearance of a cultural phenomenon on the streets of Belgium -the frietkotten (snackbars) where you could purchase french fries.

Lode and Elke established the color palette for the students to work with (predominately blues and oranges).  This limited color palette gave the installation a strong sense of unity from image to image.

Hundreds and hundreds of images.

Check out Elke D'Haenen's website by clicking here: https://elkedhaenen.wordpress.com/.

A piece from a different project in Moengo by Klaas Burger.  It is waiting to be installed.  The delay is due to some objections by some of the locals because the piece inadvertently makes some objectionable religious allusions.  The piece will probably never be installed and it just hangs out in Limbo.

The artwork of Rueben La Cruz and Karolien Helweg.

An amazing sculptural installation from Razia Barsatie.

The intricate, charming, and sometimes quite funny fabric pieces of Jakop Ferri impressed me to no end.  Then I saw his work on his website and was absolutely blown away by how perceptive to the human condition his work is and how prolific Jakup is.  Holy Smokes!!  Check it out for yourself: http://jakupferri.blogspot.com/.

Marcel Pinas' work at the Contemporary Art Museum Moengo.  Several of his pieces are created in collaboration with students, citizens, and other artists.

There is a great deal of gold mining in Suriname.  Mercury is used somewhere during the process and subsequently has leaked into the water supply.  To some degree, the water in Suriname is killing its people.  This piece is created using a series of containers used for retrieving water.  Inside the baskets/buckets are bones instead of water.

Wrapping up the series of posts on Suriname.  A smattering of images......

They have some pretty spectacular sunsets in Moengo.

One of dozens of log trucks I saw rolling through the streets.  Each log you see is roughly one meter in diameter (or larger!).

Ahhhhh, Joyous to the "Eyebrow" -inspirational reading for all ages.

An old (?) abandoned (?) house (?) or mosque (?) not far off of the main road in Moengo.  I know nothing of its history, merely that it was an intriguing structure.

Speaking of interesting architecture, earlier on I showed a couple images of the remnants of a large building in Paramaribo on Henck Arronstraat near the Presidential Palace.....

........it turns out that they are what is left of the old National Assembly building.  I just found that out about a week ago.

I close with this HUGE moth that was sitting outside my room one morning.  How can you top that?

Wait! I know how you can top that, how about a group photograph of several of the artists who participated in the Moengo Festival of Visual Arts?  Yeah, that's better!

Pictured:  Front row: (left to right) Bart Stuart, Steven Jouwersma, Wouter Klein Velderman.  Second row: Rob Perree, Klaar Van Der Lippe. Third row: Ruben La Cruz, Remy Jungerman, Jasmin Werner, and Charl Landvreugd.  Fourth row: Tirzo Martha, Jean-Michel Fickinger (peeking over Tirzo's shoulder), Dany Leriche, and Karolien Helweg (standing in front of the door).

Since there is a goodly amount of time between my first post and this final (Suriname-related) post I am including links to the first 8 posts in this series:

The Suriname Chronicles Part I

The Suriname Chronicles Part II

The Suriname Chronicles Part III

The Suriname Chronicles Part IV

The Suriname Chronicles Part V

The Suriname Chronicles Part VI

The Suriname Chronicles Part VII

The Suriname Chronicles Part VIII