French-Romani artist Jeremy Demester's work interrogates myth and religion through intricately decorated paintings and textiles. Demester draws on the rich folklore, oral history, and mythology of Benin culture to explore the imaginative forces that bind Vodun societies and travelling peoples in his vibrant paintings, esoteric sculptures, and detailed works on paper.
Read MoreA descendent of the itinerant ancestry of the Romani community, Demester was born in 1988 in Digne, France. He currently lives and works between Paris and Ouidah, Benin.
Jeremy Demester explores myth and religion in his painting and sculptural work by creating ceremonial garments and totem-like objects.
In his solo exhibition Ouidah (2020), he worked in collaboration with several Voodoo masters, when he was given 21 words by an oracle. These words, which included sun, moon, arrow, and cross, populated the visual language of Demester's work in the exhibition, as a means to communicate with the spiritual.
Ouidah (2020) included paintings, sculptures, textiles, and works from the artist's personal collection. Le Couvent from 2020 is a brightly-coloured canvas composed of different repetitive shapes such as dots, teardrops, and inverted triangles. Demester also paints over textiles as in his Buriyan ceremony dress (2019), a garment painted over in pinks, blues, and browns. Ouidah also included Adé Revenants (Egoun gown) (2019), a set of two intricately embroidered and decorated robes worn by mannequins reclining on chairs.
In the past, Demester has also taken inspiration from the relationship of art to the creation myths in the world. Fire Walk With Me (2018) explored these connections and entanglements through abstracted paintings created while the artist spent ten 'almost monastic' months in his studio in the south of France. In these paintings, Demester portrays the sky's changing colours, distant memories from his childhood, and trees swaying in the wind, playing with the traditions of still life coupled with an inquiry into subjectivity. Speaking of his work the artist has stated, 'Painting is a body in which thought and unknown desires are embodied.'
Jeremy Demester has held solo exhibitions at the Fondation Zinsou, Ouidah (2021); Bleibtreustraße 45, Berlin (2020); and Stiftung zur Förderung zeitgenössischer Kunst, Weidengen (2018).
Jeremy Demester's Instagram can be found here.
Arianna Mercado | Ocula | 2022
