Quentley Barbara: Now we are colleagues

Quentley Barbara makes enormous cardboard sculptures of the people who play an important role in his life. He does so with the aim of sharing their stories to inspire others and to motivate and support those portrayed. Quentley's presentation in the display in the store window shows his development from his youth to his arrival in the Netherlands. In particular, Quentley reflects on his journey from student to artist.

Quentley grew up in Curaçao. At the age of 13, Quentley was the youngest student to date to start at Instituto Buena Bista (IBB). IBB is the center for contemporary art on Curaçao, located on the grounds of a psychiatric clinic in Willemstad. There he came into contact with making visual art: “Art is like a soup, you put all kinds of ingredients in it.” He has been guided in his development by Tirzo Marta and David Bade, among others. In cardboard, Quentley found the material to express himself and share his experiences and stories. After his arrival in the Netherlands, he was surprised at the ease with which items and materials were thrown away. He uses cardboard and duct tape to create his work and often deliberately leaves imperfections, partly because this reflects human qualities. With these properties, the work has a fragile and ephemeral character; you could say it's a mirror of the human condition.

For Quentley, the presentation in the store window is not only a translation of his journey from student to artist, but above all: his journey from student to colleague. His former teacher and now fellow artist, Tirzo Marta, stars in a painting in a gigantic cardboard book next to paintings of Quentley’s family and his grandmother's house on Curaçao. In a different painting a Dutch railway train features with portraits of relatives and friends in the blue sky above it.

At the same time, another one of his former teachers, David Bade, presents an exhibition of his now tenth anniversary of the initiative David Bade Draws down Heerlen in the museum gallery at SCHUNCK. As Quentley often jokingly said to David in recent years: “Now we are colleagues.”

The project is made possible in part by the Province of Limburg.