Installation shot

Yonamine’s densely layered collages respond to his experience of acculturation, segregation, itinerancy, social differentiation and gentrification across cities in Africa and Europe. Made on newspaper and using black India ink, they are composed from vernacular imagery sourced directly from the street and urban space, incorporating references to graffiti, tattoo art, street art, wheat-pasting, corporate lettering, brands and street posters. Such everyday images and visual techniques are appropriated to join elements from online culture, such as the words ‘Procura-Se’ (Wanted) or the artist’s own name, inscribed as a logo.

Yonamine has lived between Angola, Portugal, France and Germany, and is currently residing in Zimbabwe. His works depict the urban realities of an individual who has experienced life in both European and African cities and a number of different cultures. While presenting the visuals and icons of globalisation and capitalism, the works evoke the accumulation and erasure of memories and histories across place and time, as well as the artist’s bodily and psychological experience of being ‘in-between’ cultures, nations and urban lives.