Kendell Geers
If I could put my art into words I would stop making art.
Kendell Geers (1968, South Africa) uses art to confront systems of power, censorship, violence, and belief. Raised during apartheid, Geers became involved in the anti-apartheid movement as a teenager and later redefined his identity by changing his birth date to May 1968, a symbolic reference to political resistance. These experiences continue to shape his artistic vision, which combines political activism with mysticism, ritual, language, and references to art history. Describing himself as an “AniMystikAKtivist,” Geers draws on Afro-European traditions, including animism and alchemy, while using dark humour and irony to question social and political structures.
Working across sculpture, installation, painting, film, and performance, Geers often uses materials associated with danger, such as broken glass, barbed wire, electric fencing, and fire. In recent years, he has increasingly explored how language, abstraction, and censorship shape contemporary society. Through fragmented texts and geometric compositions based on hidden or suppressed information, Geers examines how political power controls what can be seen, understood, and remembered. Despite the confrontational nature of his work, Geers sees art as a universal visual language that can connect people across cultural and ideological divides.
