Verlan x Kendell Geers - Navy

By changing the English translation of Rimbaud’s classic «Une Saison en Enfer» into the plural, artist Kendell Geers creates a play on words that is as poetic as it is political.

All our seasons are now in hell with heat waves, floods, wildfires and droughts protesting against human habits.

Kendell Geers shatters the reading even further by breaking down the words into SEA SON SIN and HELL. The reference to the classic 1978 song Sea Sex and Sun by Serge Gainsbourg is not a coincidence because the two artists share the same passion for words that have double meanings. Kendell Geers draws our attention to the direct link between our luxury lifestyles and how they affect climate change. Our SONS and daughters now pay the price for the SINS of our parents and grandparents.

Born into a working-class Afrikaans family during the height of Apartheid, Kendell Geers quickly found himself fighting a Crime Against Humanity on the front lines of activism and protest. From his strong experiences as a revolutionary, he developed a psycho-social-political practice that held ethics and aesthetics to be opposite sides of the very same coin, spinning upon the tables of history. In his hands, the discourse of art history is interrogated, languages of power and ideological codes subverted, expectations smashed and belief systems transformed into aesthetic codes.

Describing himself as an AniMystikAktivist, Kendell Geers’ work embodies a syncretic approach that weaves together diverse Afro-European traditions from Animism and Activism, to Alchemy, Mysticism and Ritual Magick.

His strategies are without compromise because he believes that “Art changes the world - one perception at a time.” Geers’ works are held in the permanent collections of public institutions including: Centre Pompidou, Paris; MAXXI, Rome; Magasin III Museum & Foundation for Contemporary Art, Stockholm; Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago and ArtPace, Austin.

Texmin is a factory based in Portugal near Porto. It’s been more than 30 years they are partnering with top brands including levis, a-cold-wall or Maison Kitsuné. Texmin was the first factory we met when we were visiting Portugal for the first time and the only that trusted in our project. We are everyday in contact with Raquel, whose in charge of us for more than two years, and Francisco, the owner of Texmin. With Francisco, we share the want of keeping things small and qualitative, being obsessed by details. That’s why he keeps his number of employees below twenty, that he keeps investing in new machinery or new facilities as to offer top level working conditions to his employees. Being the best always has been the goal of Francisco and Texmin, and we are thankful to have them on our side.

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