Trinidad and Tobago artist A k u z u r u is a transdisciplinary creator whose work blends architecture, performance, sculpture, and ritual to explore environmental healing and spiritual embodiment.
A k u z u r u, OPUS CHRYSALIS - Afterbirth: The Blacksmith = Digging Kleine Scheidegg to find Afrika so as to bury my Essence in her Womb. 2016. Switzerland. Courtesy of the artist.
Despite being a creative professional from the Caribbean, I only first met the Trinidad and Tobago artist A k u z u r u in 2020, while attending the online symposium “In-Between Worlds”. Under the title “Spiritual Embodiment and Environmental Healing with A K U Z U R U,” the artist shared her environmental work that, as she herself describes, “produces through a TransDisciplinary praxis straddling multiple approaches”.
A k u z u r u, “Trance-Formation: Doucement…….de L’Eau Por L’ORI -Body Aphorisms”, at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (USA). Photo by Oriol Tarridas.
Her work invokes an unseen. Transcendental in its nature and connecting the material and the immaterial, it includes human and its other, as labor of collective healing. According to A k u z u r u, she performs architectonic sculptures: conversations that take place as “large forest vines enveloping abandoned buildings.” A k u z u r u sees her dialogues within the structures of buildings and their interiors as other-worldly installations or “Spatial Works”. They inoculate deep emotions and operate as nature’s way of consuming them, while reinstating for a claim of its rightful place.
A k u z u r u, Scrolls Between S P A C E S. 2018. Performance event at the Green Market Santa Cruz - Trinidad & Tobago. Photo: Arnaldo James.
A k u z u r u explores the root cause of a sick Earth: humanity. Her multi-genre work includes fashion design, performance art, installation, and sculpture. Her work brings these disciplines together in structures of architectural proportions, mechanisms in motion, and post-human creatures, to advocate for societal change.
Parthenogenesis – a Maze of Silence within a Roar is her most recent work. Parthenogenesis is a natural phenomenon whereby a female being can reproduce without having to mate with a male. Launched in April 2024, at Central Bank Museum in Port of Spain, this “Healing Chamber” aims for ecological awareness and interrelates the existential and the transcendental.
A k u z u r u, Parthenogenesis - a Maze of Silence within a Roar: Kelp Forest. 2024. Central Bank Museum POS Trinidad & Tobago. Courtesy of the artist.
This “Healing Chamber” aims for ecological awareness and interrelates the existential and the transcendental.
Besides exploring female asexual reproduction, this artwork connects to the Earth’s feminine vibration. “Mother Earth as a feminine vibration is constantly reconstituting her frequencies to keep the Balances in check,” she says. In this pursuit, Parthenogenesis “is a process of attaining Ascension,” making sure that we understand it as a state of high consciousness. Here we can see that A k u z u r u takes the Earth as guiding principle for her work as a system like the Universe, Earth, and how life moves through space and time.
A k u z u r u, Earthology India, Akt 3 - SavannDurga. 2008. Bangalore, India. Courtesy of the artist.
A k u z u r u’s practice invites us to reconsider not only our relationship to the Earth but also to the energetic and spiritual forces that shape our existence. Her work transcends artistic categories to become a form of ritual, in a transformative process that urges us to listen, to feel, and ultimately, to re-align ourselves with the deeper rhythms of the planet that include multidimensional forces, human beings, earth material, birds, whales, dolphins, all sea life, the majestic ocean, and expansive waterways.
A k u z u r u is an avant-garde, transdisciplinary artist from Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, renowned for her immersive performance art, sculptural installations, and metaphysical explorations.
tumpi flow is a persona of Surinamese curator, artist, and certified coach, Miguel ‘EdKe’ Keerveld. They curate art manifestations and interventions based on artistic research intersecting science, shamanism, and social practice.
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