Yubi Kirindongo Rebel In Art And Soul

The work of the celebrated and award-winning Yubi Kirindongo (Willemstad, 1946) has been seen throughout the world, both in galleries and at international exhibitions such as the Biennials of Havana, Johannesburg and São Paulo. His work is accessible, but not uncomplicated. Until now, Kirindongo's recycling art has seldom been seen in the Netherlands. With more than sixty works created in the period from the 1970s to the present day, Museum Beelden aan Zee is presenting the first major retrospective of the oeuvre of the Antilles most important artist. To be seen are sculptures made from car bumpers and other vehicle components. But Kirindongo also fashions other waste materials and discarded objects into meaningful and socially engaged sculptures. After a hard youth, at the age of nineteen the fatherless Yubi Kirindongo left the Antilles as a stowaway on a freighter for Europe. After eventually arriving in Amsterdam by way of Athens, Rome and Genoa, he found work as, among other things, a hospital ward orderly, but also as a boxer. However, Kirindongo's life took a turn for the worse, and he ended up on the seamy side of the 1960s petit bourgeois Dutch society, reaching it deepest point with a spell in prison. However, both while serving his sentence and later after his release, he came in contact to an increasing extent with a true interest, art. Kirindongo felt liberated after reading the life story of Caravaggio. The same hot-headedness, constantly having to watch his back, but still able to create magnificent works of art. 0Exhibition: Museum Beelden aan Zee, Scheveningen, the Netherlands (31.1.-1.6.2014).