AFAKA / TEMBE
Marcel Pinas
This installation is on show at Bak Basecamp
AFAKA / TEMBE draws on two distinct yet interconnected knowledge systems from Ndyuka Maroon culture in Suriname: tembe and the Afaka script. Tembe patterns – traditionally carved or painted onto wood and architecture – encode social bonds, ancestral memory and spatial orientation through geometric form. These motifs operate as visual carriers of communal knowledge, transmitting meaning across generations without reliance on written text.
Afaka, developed in the early twentieth century for the Ndyuka language, is the only known writing system created specifically for a creole language. Emerging from a primarily oral culture, it represents a deliberate act of preservation and self-determination. In Pinas’ work, Afaka signs move across the canvas alongside tembe structures, transforming the surface into a field where oral tradition, graphic inscription and contemporary abstraction converge.
This work positions script and pattern as technologies in their own right – tools for safeguarding language, encoding knowledge and sustaining sovereignty through form.