Xavier Robles De Medina
Removal of the statue of Queen Wilhelmina, 2024 - 2020

Notably, Robles de Medina’s grandfather, Stuart Robles de Medina —an artist and educator— was commissioned to craft a bronze sculpture of Pengel after his passing that was revealed on Independence Square 50 years ago in 1974. The meticulous documentation of this process, captured in a family photo album, not only chronicles the artistic endeavour but inadvertently provides a snapshot of the societal climate during the politically tumultuous period leading to Suriname’s independence in 1975.

Extensive research by Xavier Robles de Medina highlights the circumstances surrounding the sculpture’s creation, culminating in a monograph that replicates the original photo album.

A pivotal moment in the narrative centres around the removal of the sculpture of Queen Wilhelmina, located in the same square as the sculpture of Pengel, on the eve of Suriname’s independence. A photo from the archives of the Stichting Surinaams Museum shows Stuart Robles de Medina and colleagues during this removal. The artist renders this photo in acrylic paint by enlarging it until the sculpture assumes life-size proportions. Attached to scaffolding akin to that seen in the original album photos, the monumental painting towers over the exhibition. Though not needing a complicated cast, the painting’s production is equally laborious as the artist applies coat after coat of various shades of metallic grey.

This rigorous approach, echoing an archaeologist’s labour of unearthing remains in the ground, finds a parallel in a painting depicting an excavation site. In Robles de Medina’s practice, meticulous research and the painstakingly slow application of paint become inseparable, thus heightening the relationship between the artwork’s subject matter and how it materializes in the form of a painting. As he works, layers of societal and political history slowly unravel until they culminate in a shiny, grainy surface in which an image finally reveals itself.

The metallic hue of the painted surfaces gains added intensity beside a small bronze sculpture adorned with a green patina. In this artwork, the artist transforms a two-dimensional scene from Disney’s Snow White into a three-dimensional object. This sculpture not only pays homage to his grandfather’s pioneering work but also blurs the boundaries between the different mediums’ material and spatial distinctions. Simultaneously, the artist’s incoporation of borrowed images with personal memories merges the spheres of individual and collectively shared associations.

- Extract from the exhibition press release: Love is not a maybe thing…, Efremidis, Berlin DE.

A statue of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands stands in front of Fort Zeelandia; in 1974, she was moved away where she used to stand in front of the Governor’s Palace (now the Presidential Palace), and was replaced with a sculpture of Jopie Pengel by Stuart Robles de Medina. In the archive of the Surinaams Museum exists a photograph of Stuart and a colleague guiding the rope-bound sculpture of Queen Wilhelmina down into her present resting place. The Queen and Fort Zeelandia mark the land– here lies the brutal failure of empire. Violent structures we deem to be permanent are often rotting and fragile inside, and they can be easily torn down, moved away from the center, if we mobilize and tend to our fiery love.