Lusgarda (Film Component)

Kevin Osepa

Drawn from Lusgarda, Osepa’s Prix de Rome–winning installation, this film reflects on Ocho Dia, the eight-day mourning period observed in Curaçaoan funerary tradition. Once central to communal life, this ritual marks a structured passage through grief, culminating in the symbolic release of the spirit of the deceased. Today, it is a practice at risk of disappearance.

Osepa approaches mourning as a cultural technology: a shared framework through which loss is processed, memory is organised, and relationships between the living and the dead are sustained. Through a careful interplay of image, sound and duration, the film evokes the fragility of this tradition while insisting on its continued resonance.

Kevin Osepa

― Artist

Born in 1994 in Willemstad, Curacao Lives and works in Utrecht, The Netherlands Kevin Osepa (1994) was born and raised in Curaçao. In 2017, he graduated from the Utrecht School of the Arts with a degree in photography. With the project Mester Blousé, in which he explores how much his identity has been shaped by the spirituality and rituals of his native country, he became the youngest nominee ever for the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize. Numerous nominations, awards, and exhibitions soon followed, including at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, the Nederlands Fotomuseum, the Amsterdam Museum, and TENT. Within a short time, Osepa became an important young voice in the art world. He shifted his focus from photography to film, and with his debut Watamula (2020), he received three nominations for a Golden Calf award. A key theme in Osepa’s work is his exploration of Afro-Caribbean identity within a postcolonial reality. The stories he tells often stem from a strongly personal perspective.

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