Brendon Bell-Roberts catches up with Zak Ové at the Louvre in Adu Dhabi to discuss the early influences on his work, his retrospective exhibition at Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno and some recent projects
Zak Ové, detail from the exhibition ‘Virulent Strain’, 2025, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM). Courtesy of Zak Ové and CAAM.
As an artist of transformation, Zak Ové brings together a vibrant mix of Caribbean, African, and European cultural elements—blending everything from music to visual media like sculpture, photography, and textiles—to create what you might call viral new forms, taking everyday objects and completely reimagining them.
Through collage, appropriation, and bold juxtapositions of form, material, and colour, he turns the familiar into something new and unexpected. His retrospective exhibition at the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), curated by Paul Goodwin, offers a sweeping look at his practice, tracing key moments and shifts in his creative journey. It includes his early photographic work capturing the energy and diversity of multicultural London; his deep engagement with carnival traditions and communities in Trinidad, which marked a turning point toward object-making; iconic large-scale sculptures like the Invisible Man series; Invisible Man And The Masque of Blacknessand his more recent explorations in textiles and abstraction. The show maps out Ové’s evolving language—one rooted in heritage yet constantly pushing forward into new imaginative territory. The ‘Virulent Strain’ retrospective catalogue will be available soon, including texts by Orlando Britto Jinorio (CAAM Director), curator Paul Goodwin, and Dr Gus Casley Hayford.
As I sit down with Zak Ové, he is making the final touches to Black Starliner, his accompanying piece for the landmark exhibition ‘Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power’ at the Louvre, Abu Dhabi. I first encountered Ové’s work at an exhibition at the Lawrie Shabibi Gallery in Dubai in March 2018 titled ‘Star Liner’. Now, we are meeting for the first time in the UAE seven years later to talk about art and discuss his retrospective at Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM) and other recent exhibitions. His animated and enthusiastic energy is contagious, but it belies the gravity of the colonial legacy running through his work and the acknowledgement of his upbringing that guides his potent narratives.
Zak Ové, Black Starliner. Photo: Courtesy of Zak Ové
Ové has long been fascinated by how African culture has been preserved and kept alive despite slavery and colonialism, particularly across the Caribbean and the Americas. He views it as a vital cultural anchor, kept alive through songs, stories, and rituals, even in the absence of direct ties to the past. What resonates most for Ové is how these traditions survived despite systematic efforts by colonial powers like the British, Spanish, and French to erase them. Voodoo practitioners, herbalists, and those with ancestral knowledge were deliberately targeted by the colonialists in what he identifies as an attempt at ‘cultural genocide’.
