KEVIN OSEPA: Beneath a Sacred Street

Osepa’s photography and films revolve around the everyday and the mystical, the personal and the  collective in the world of Afro-Caribbean youth. A world where the reality of everyday life and the magical world of Afro-Caribbean rituals flow together. Osepa’s interest in mystical themes stems from his  childhood, which was imbued with the spiritual practices of ‘Brua’. This fusion of Catholic, African and  indigenous religions is still very much alive among the older generations in the Antilles.

In his work, Kevin Osepa examines personal and collective narratives of older, Antillean generations to both better understand his own identity and to preserve and revive the mystical rituals, customs and  stories of his ancestors. The themes he explores have an autobiographical basis but also relate to current  societal themes. Themes such as the identity of Afro-Caribbean youth in a post-colonial world, masculinity  within the Antillean context, the role of gender, and how to find a sense of home.

About Kevin Osepa

Kevin Osepa was born in 1994 in Willemstad, Curaçao and lives and works in Amsterdam. He graduated in Photography in 2017 from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU), Utrecht. Osepa’s film La Última Ascensión (2022) won a Golden Calf at the Dutch Film Festival for Best Short Film. Earlier, he was nominated for the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize (2018), among others, and in 2023 he received both the Charlotte Köhler Prize  and the Amsterdam Prize for the Arts.