Quinsy Gario

Quinsy Gario (1984, CW) was born in Curaçao and raised in St. Maarten and the Netherlands. He studied Theater, Film and Television Studies at the Utrecht University with a focus on Gender and Postcolonial Studies. He won the Hollandse Nieuwe 12 Theatermakers Prize 2011, the Issue Award 2014, the Amsterdam Fringe Festival Silver Award 2015 and was a finalist in the 2011 Dutch National Poetry Slam Championship.

His most well known work 'Zwarte Piet Is Racisme' critiqued the general knowledge surrounding the racist Dutch figure of Black Pete, which he followed up by bringing out into the open the governmental support that keeps the figure alive in the Netherlands. His latest focus is on state protection of the marginalized and political resistance as performance.

He is a board member of de Appel Amsterdam, member of the pan-African artist collective State of L3 and a recurring participant of the Black Europe Body Politics biannual conference series. His work has been shown in Galleri Image, Aarhus; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerpen; Gallery 23 and Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam. He has performed among other places in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Contact Theater, Manchester; Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin, and The African Community Center, Jerusalem. Currently he is enrolled in the Master Artistic Research program at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague.