Plastic Artist

CLARKE Bruce

Bruce Clarke is a visual artist and photographer based in Paris. He was born in London in 1959 to South-African parents.

The artist became early invested in politics and became an activist in the anti-apartheid struggle. His work mainly focuses on the history and how it is transmitted.

He studied Fine Arts at the University in Leeds and learned about the movement Art & Language and conceptual art.

Rwanda

The Garden of Memory

As a photographer, he chose to go to Rwanda to publish a reportage. Clarke was totally shocked by the genocide and its consequences.

He proposed to create an artistic memorial on a site close to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, to commemorate the victims who were massacred.

This garden of memory is supposed to be an installation with over one million stones for each victim's name. The project was realized in partnership with the people associations of the civil society in Rwanda and was supported by UNESCO.

Without Art, we wouldn't be human.
The very basic definition of what humanity is, what being human is, is that humans got language and culture.
Otherwise, we're animals. Literally.

Bruce Clarke, 2021

Technique

Playing with fragments

Bruce Clarke's work incorporates codes of the figuration to develop a critic against injustice and organs of power.

According to Bruce Clarke, history is told by bribes that we have to rearrange.

Bruce Clarke creates using fragments from newspapers or posters. All the individual pieces are integrated into the painting and reorganized. History can reveal itself under these layers.

Animal paintings

Predators

These paintings were made after Bruce Clarke reflected on the notion of predation.

In this series, the animal depicted is a metaphor. The subject is always the human being for Bruce Clarke.

Despite his strong sense of empathy, Man is one of the only species to hunt his own and not only for survival. Human predation can be financial, sexual, or environmental. We can also say social or ecological predation.