Xavier Robles de Medina

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Artist statement

My practice investigates how images shape history, identity, and collective memory. Approaching history as a constructed space rather than a fixed record, I examine how archival photographs, monuments, cinema, and works of art acquire authority and dictate visibility. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, and writing, I explore how inherited images continue to shape contemporary systems of representation. Growing up in Suriname as a gay person and later training across film and painting, my perspective is deeply informed by an intersection of colonial imagery, popular culture, and diasporic experience. This lineage is also anchored in my family history: my grandfather, the Surinamese artist Stuart Robles de Medina, was a foundational maker of public monuments, prompting my ongoing inquiry into monumentality, cultural inheritance, and public memory. In my studio practice, I begin with close readings of archival photographs, family albums, and film stills that carry embedded histories of power, exclusion, and migration. Through labor-intensive processes of graphite drawing, oil painting, and bronze casting, I deliberately decelerate the circulation of images to invite sustained attention over instant consumption. In a culture driven by algorithmic speed and spectacle, this slowness is a critical and political position, embracing ambiguity and complexity. Ultimately, I understand artistic practice as a process of reconstruction rather than explanation. Whether...

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