2021 – 2022 solo exhibition, Behind The Forest, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Remy Jungerman (1959) was born in Moengo, Suriname. He studied at the Academy for Arts and Cultural Education (AHKCO) in Paramaribo and moved to Amsterdam in 1990 to continue his art education at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. He expresses his ideas through grid works, collages, horizontal, and vertical structures, panels, cubes, silkscreens, and film, as standalone pieces or as part of installations. In 2019, he represented the Netherlands at the 58th Venice Biennale.
In 2005, Jungerman travelled to Suriname to attend his father’s funeral. While there, he visited his mother’s family altar and took part in rituals of ancestral veneration. His mother was a descendant of the Bakabusi people known as “the people behind the forest”, who escaped enslavement under the leadership of the Granman, the paramount chief, following a fierce battle with colonizers. To honor his mother’s culture, that is Surinamese Maroon culture, Jungerman has since devoted his practice to its exploration.
The exhibition title Behind the Forest is a direct reference to the Bakabusi people. This overview of his work therefore begins in 2005, and includes works created especially for this exhibition. Jungerman makes connections between Surinamese Maroon culture and 20th-century modernism, with the geometric patterns of traditional textiles playing a key role. Finding these connections and juxtaposing materials and imagery drawn from different cultures are part of his efforts to find an autonomous visual language that does justice to the cultures of the countries and regions that define him: Suriname, the Netherlands, West Africa and the United States.
