Ray Funk

Artist Zak Ové seems to be everywhere these days in exhibitions all over Europe and North America, doing remarkable and varied artwork.

In the last year, his work has been on display at galleries in Europe to North America. Son of the legendary Trinidad-born filmmaker Sir Horace Ové, Zak Ové was first known as a filmmaker and photographer but is now better known for large public sculptures and dynamic collages from crochet doilies, old fabric pieces, and more.

In 2015, for the Great Court of the British Museum, Ové created two 23-foot sculptures of moko jumbies as part of the Celebrate Africa exhibit.

They have since been moved to be part of the Sainsbury Africa Galleries in the museum, and Ové became the first Caribbean artist to have his work in the museum’s permanent collection.

The National Gallery of Ontario then commissioned another moko jumbie statue that went on display starting in 2021, but because of his schedule, it was only on February 28 this year that he got to do an artist’s talk at the gallery.

His work is also featured in a show that just opened in Texas on Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists Since 1940, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Public sculpture

The large moko jumbie sculptures are but part of a growing and eclectic number of massive public sculptures Ové has created, which are incredibly varied and impressive and have appeared in different settings.

His Mothership Connection is a nine-foot-tall rocket ship with blinking lights, which was on display in Regent’s Park in London. As he told Frieze magazine, “I have had a long interest in Afro-futurism, which features in a lot of my work – the idea of time travel between the past and the future – and for me the use of lights really helps give it a life force and a sense of breath. I tried to make a totem that spoke about the African diaspora…I have tried to use, through the sections, a discourse on various styles of architecture that were either built by slaves or indentured laborers. The piece is named after an album by the American funk band Parliament.

“I remember seeing George Clinton and Parliament in 1976, the year Star Wars came out,” Ové recalls. “When he entered the stage in a spaceship it blew me away!”

His most famous public work so far may be his “army” of statues, the Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness.

They are 40 identical six-and-a-half-feet-tall graphite figures. The image is based on a small piece of Kenyan art his father gave him when Zak was young.

These massive sculptures were first installed in 2016 at Somerset House in London and have since been displayed in Yorkshire and in California.

The post Across continents — Zak Ové preserves father’s artistic legacy appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.