KUNTI DABO

the artist

Kunti Dabo (b. 1997, Southwark) is a British visual artist of Sierra Leonean heritage. 

He is the first of 5 early career artists to undertake an activity of their choosing in flat 70 as part of the Family Circle project. Kunti is an autodidact who began painting/drawing in 2020 before attending courses at the Royal School of Drawing. Previous work has been included in flat 70’s Reclaim space campaign, was featured in It’s Nice That and exhibited in the London edition of The Big Draw Festival 2022. 

_____

Experiments in a limited framework, Kunti Dabo offers the local community 5 works in pastel on paper. Gathered together, the artist considers this moment in time a prelude, as his classical sensibilities are inflected with more contemporary ideas. With an insatiable appetite for inspiration, Kunti’s practice involves a process of citation and destruction, burying references and iteration in each work. Dabo is diligent, closely studying the work of other artists, to develop an understanding of their ‘imagery’, before creating his own ‘language’ in response. Prior to this showcase, Kunti was preoccupied with the theory of abstract expressionism, Kantian and Hegelian dialectics and the free jazz modalities of John Coltrane. Kunti’s process often starts with a quick figure drawing made from life before unfilling them with swathe of colours swabbed from his most recent image - language translations. 

As with each of the artists selected for the Family Circle project, Kunti has created an activity exclusively for engaging local residents experiencing gentrification. He will lead a workshop on his approach to colour for residents facing displacement or other gentrification related trauma’s. 

Kunti ‘s reflections on his creative process take on a heightened relevance to the experience of urbanisation. Elephant & Castle has seen £4bn of investment, alongside the demolition of thousands of homes primarily owned or occupied by communities of the global ethnic majority.

“I don’t think it’s ever finished. You have to be ready to move on from an artwork, there’s a difference between being finished and ready for interaction or reaction. It's my attempt to seek rather than contemplate hope or its absence.These ideas came up after reading Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus several years ago. Camus talks about the need humans have to attribute meaning to life and the silent response of the world in return (the absurd). Whether there is hope or none at all, these pictures are an attempt to make a record of my experience. A decision to take a action rather than contemplation in the form of art”

Visit Kunti’s website

the work