Carla Kranendonk’s richly textured images of African women balance the human with the material. Kranendonk’s works come to represent a travelogue of collected images and memories, as she projects herself into the unremembered land of her Surinamese husband’s forebears. Her magnificent figures are fixed in the distinctive patterning and colours of West African and Caribbean prints and textiles. She draws them out of her compositions with the addition of beadwork, collage, and canvas stitching, giving her life-size subjects a vital presence.

Kranendonk’s works are held in private collections in New York, Cape Town, Geneva, Israel and London.