THE WORD / Mode2
title: The Word
artist: Mode2
year: 2012
medium: pastel and acrylic on linen
size: ± 180 x 120 cm
Born in Mauritius in 1967, before moving to London in 1976, Mode 2 spent his childhood immersed in different cultures.
In the summer of ‘84, he fell into Hip Hop, a still-misunderstood culture; of which he remains a renowned advocate and theorist... even though he finds the term itself redundant, and incapable of representing the sum of its parts.
Skipping classes and hopping to Paris, with the money earned on his first paid commissions, he joined the legendary Bando in 1985, and they joined each other's crew. The cover of “Spraycan Art”, released by Thames & Hudson in autumn of ‘87, exported his name and characters to the four corners of the planet.
A culture that is revisiting all the others, with elements taken up and reinterpreted to one’s individual tastes, Mode 2 began, mixing music, dance, environmental issues, eroticism, history and politics into his work. He cooked up his own alchemy and definition of a culture accessible to all, irrespective of their background, with the tag as its common denominator, based on the alphabet itself.
Historian through his personal photo archives, along with his obsession for remembering dates; he coupled these elements with his political commitment, his years of experience running workshops, as well as participating in or organizing festivals and other events across the world (such as The Bridges Of Graffiti at the Venice Biennale in 2015). Alongside some of the respected thinkers of this movement, he has never backed away from telling things as he saw them; even when it was not popular to do so, or if it meant losing out on lucrative opportunities...
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