Summary: FB: Hollis Baptiste<br>Seasoned Afro Canadian Social Political Artist Hollis Baptiste discusses his work, his philosophy, and his recent and upcoming exhibitions, including the Twisted Metal in Motion tour with Erin Ademoglu. Hollis is an outsider with a taste for surrealistic and abstract compositions. His depiction and subversive commentary messages the social and political entities of the global community, in which he lives. The social divide epidemic that affects the billions of people that inhabit the world can have devastating effects. Issues of this magnitude require an audience dedicated to extinguishing any economic, social and racial reservations that exist. (<br><br><a href="http://www.thatchannel.com">http://www.thatchannel.com</a> 2016.08a-02<br><br>Hollis Baptiste is a mid career, self trained artist, born 1962 in Trinidad, residing and practicing art in Canada since 1972. The scope of work 80’s, 90’s 2000’s is concerned with social issues. Hollis says, “Its hard work to like my art. You have to be able to conceptualize it intellectually and most folks are not willing to do that.”<br><br>In preparation for his upcoming show “i.C.POP RU Pop” Hollis dropped by my studio to pick up some pedestals. ”I’m working with plastic bottles” he says. The pedestals are a little worse for wear.”Got any white paint?’’ he asks. I drag half a can up from the basement.<br><br>As an African Canadian artist he walks in the footprints of African American installation artist David Hammons and Junkster artist Lonnie Holey. He feels it is his duty to illuminate his social concerns and create subversive works, which illustrate issues of human rights, consumerism, gun culture and violence in mainstream media. I met Hollis Baptiste, a socio-political urban realist in 2003, he exhibited ‘Masks, Faces and Profiles’, a retrospective of his works created in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, at Studio Visual.<br><br>He hands me an invite, “A voodoo doll in the shadows”, her creepy little silhouette casts a spell. When I enter the gallery, Dionne Simpsons’ live work space,the true image of “i.C.POP RU Pop” is revealed. A little brown naked baby doll, doused in Santeria blue, attempting to take her first steps with empty chubby plastic bottles screwed onto her feet. The baby doll is the icon of the show. She is I.C.POP and she wants to know R.U.POP.<br><br>Hollis Baptiste’s work raises issues that prevail in the popular culture of the twentieth and the twenty-first century. Hollis employs both diverse techniques and mediums to convey his message. In many ways his work illustrates, speaks to and liberates the tormented soul. The African Diaspora is clearly evident in many of his paintings and discarded bottle sculptures. Baptiste paints images of disfigured countenances, figures with spears and arrows going in many directions, suggesting how defensive and non-trusting a male of African descent maybe of the world around him.
