Cupido’s celebration of women
DION CUPIDO, who hails from Mitchells Plain, has produced a body of work based on fine portraiture and inventive technical facility. Through an open call on Facebook, he found images of would be “sitters”, specifically woman from around the Cape Flats.
The intention is to express their natural beauty and complicate that with a certain layering such that beauty itself becomes complex, scarred and even defiant. For his “subjects” become a means for expressing perhaps the artists’ own inner-emotional torment.
In a brief conversation with the artist, it became clear that his methods and philosophical premise is not simply to create “pretty” pictures – and indeed the women depicted display a certain charm – but also to be challenging and confrontational. He achieves this, as eyes appear to follow the viewer and full, reddish lips remain closed and uncommunicative.
Yet, perhaps most significant is not just these characteristics together with fine draughtsmanship, but the combination of tonal accuracy, graffiti-like writing and mark-making and the free, seemingly uncontrolled dribs and drabs of paint. The effect is such that a certain layer upon layer occurs.
This richness of surface exudes the ebb and flow of time and the scars of personal and collective history. Cupido has a background in graffiti and it shows.
The graffiti work almost becomes writing-like so that the portraits become surfaces on which to express, quell or sublimate anger. Then the dripping paint and splotches add to this effect, yet he manages to describe a person and a specific look.
The backgrounds are subdued, a stretch of colour, yet one senses its symbolic import, just as the dark Middle Ages were characterised by the symbolic value of royal blue or gold. In fact, this may not be far from the mark as one of his sitters appears to be surrounded by a gold halo.
The relationship between background and foreground is heightened by the fact that the former is not busy, while the latter is frenetic, full of the turmoil and vicissitudes of life, noise, movement and energy.
The artist has focused on women sitters in a rather unconventional way and the fact that the “subjects” are not simply docile – they are larger than life – perhaps was motivated by the artist’s desire to celebrate women, especially the survivors from the Cape Flats and other areas plagued by violence and the like.
It also says something about the construction of the male image that is supposed to be aloof and driven, not open to emotions and the like. Thus, the artist lives vicariously through his “sitters” and attempts to reclaim a new space for men.
Essentially, masculine and feminine energies need to be in coherence and harmony, and one may surmise that his technical ability and the resultant artworks communicate that rather eloquently.
There are also smaller collaged works, where Cupido demonstrates a keen sense of colour, shape and form. As with the paintings, his work flitters from abstract configurations, yet all drawn together, they create a recognisable and powerful facial expression.
It is difficult to pinpoint what such an expression is saying, such is the visually satisfying nuances of a given work. One could perhaps conjecture that the fragmentary nature of these collages suggests that one lives life piecemeal, each day adding another script, another part of the narrative and never really seeing the “big picture” in its totality.
The fact that the artist then puts together the elements to form a unified image therefore satisfies a need to see all at a glance, a flash of inspiration if you will, in which case the details, the woods are known to be part of a forest – and a particular one at that.
In that sense, perhaps it is precisely feminine energy that can nourish, develop and nurture that seminal spark into a form with all its divided parts and complexities.
For she gives birth. Cupido’s “subjects” thus speak of a woman’s strength, of the need for men to access and express emotional modes of being and in the ensuing peace between masculine and feminine energies, one might just have found that which is a harbinger of peace.
Plain Reality A solo show by Dion Cupido At Worldart Gallery Until March 30