In his powerful photographs, films, paintings, and sculptures, Zak Ové mines his own Trinidadian and Irish heritage, which he describes as “black power on one side and… social feminism on the other side.” His work delves into post-colonialism in Britain and Trinidad, the African Diaspora, contemporary multiculturalism, globalization, and the blend of politics, tradition, race, and history that informs our identities. Influenced by the pioneering films of his father, Horace Ové, Zak Ové began his artistic career with a series of exuberant photographs of the participants in Trinidad’s vibrant, multivalent Carnival. He later made forays into sculpture, which he approaches as a form of narrative. Through his sculptural figures, concocted from a dynamic assortment of materials, and resembling African and Trinidadian statuary, Ové plays with notions of identity, positing the self as complex, open, and interconnected.
b. 1966
Lives and works in the Canary Islands
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023 Comments on Cosmology, C O U N T Y
The Best Of: Zak Ové, De Buck Gallery
Zak Ové: Recent and Iconic Works, De Buck Gallery
2022 Zak Ové: The Evidence of Things Not Seen, De Buck Gallery
2021 Zak Ové: Canboulay, De Buck Gallery
Spotlight: Zak Ové, De Buck Gallery
2018 Zak Ové | 'Star Liner', Lawrie Shabibi
2017 Zak Ové: Black and Blue: The Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness @Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Vigo Gallery
2013 ZAK OVÉ GLASSTRESS: WHITE LIGHT / WHITE HEAT, Vigo Gallery
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023 De Buck Gallery x Miami Arts Week, De Buck Gallery
Filling In the Pieces In Black - London, MARUANI MERCIER GALLERY
Filling In the Pieces In Black, MARUANI MERCIER GALLERY
2019 Life Through Extraordinary Mirrors, October Gallery
2017 Playing Mas, Vigo Gallery
The Figure in Contemporary Art, rosenfeld