Sabaku

Blesi foe dem soema disi no si, ma tokoe dem bribi

Date of completion: 3/21/2020
Dimensions: 5.80 x 3.40 meters
Material: wood (wana, basaloksi, bamboo)
Moengo, Suriname.

I built Sabaku during my three months residency at the Tembe Art Studio. She is a sailboat that was made in collaboration with the young Moengonese Toepie, Peres, Rishie, Gareth, Qwensie and a boat builder named Talea. Our workshop was installed at the the Tembe Art Studio and functioned as an open-air laboratory accessible to anyone. Sabaku is named after Talea’s own boat. She is inspired by a type of sailboat that can be found along the Equator all over the world but rarely in the caraibean. It resembles to a marron flat bottom korjaal made out of planches that one can find on the upper Maroni River. This project was meant to empower the youth of Moengo by participating to a collaborative art project.

After building the boat, my second step was to open a temporary sailing school where a crew of aspiring sailors were selected. Ultimately, this crew of local aspiring sailors would cross the Marowijne River on the border between Suriname and French Guiana, as a symbolic sailing passage to Europe.

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