Xavier Robles de Medina
We continued drinking in silence

Excerpt from introduction by Paula Pinho Martins Nacif for Robles de Medina’s Faya Lobi exhibition at Praz Delavallade in Paris, 2020:

A fiery love– young, revolutionary, resistant, urgent, educated, communal, organized, and united– was living in the bodies of fifteen men who opposed the military dictatorship of Suriname in the 1980s. On December 7, 8 and 9, 1982 in Paramaribo, Suriname, these fifteen men were captured by the militarized forces of the dictatorship, and taken to Fort Zeelandia in Paramaribo, where they were tortured and killed for opposing the military regime.

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Excerpt from Forbes Review of Robles de Medin’as first exhibition at the Catinca Tabacaru Gallery in New York, 2017:

We continued drinking in silence, 2016, which features an emotive reaction to the signing of the Surinamese Independence Papers in 1975, the inner emotional turmoil is palpable in the featured human subject. “I think that year was particularly divisive,” says the artist. “Half of the country’s population moved away, particularly to the Netherlands, but also to the United States and the rest of the world. Over 400,000 people left Surinam at that time. That particular drawing is very much about a similar situation to what I’ve been observing in US politics, the election, the inauguration and also European politics as well.”