Kendell Geers: Hope Is A Four Letter Word

Hope Is A Four Letter Word demonstrates Geers’ characteristic use of wordplay to foreground multiple narratives, exploring the relationship of language to power and truth. The glowing red composition plays with the word ‘hope’: lines splice the piece horizontally and vertically, creating an ‘X’. 

Though its title, colour, medium and symbolic form signal danger and hazard, its literal meaning remains ‘hope’. This contradiction distils Geers’ artistic approach: razor-sharp provocation as a way to incite positive change.  

Kendell Geers weaves together diverse Afro-European traditions from animism and activism to alchemy and mysticism. Combining the raw energy of punk with the spiritual philosophy of poets such as Arthur Rimbaud, William Blake and William S. Burroughs, he employs diverse references from the realms of art history, pop culture, protest and play.

Although his works mock notions of artistic value and originality, Geers nevertheless believes that art can ‘change the world – one perception at a time’.