Karen Jenkins – commissioned portrait, pen and watercolor on A3 sized paper.

Karen Jenkins and I met each other when we were both visiting Suriname in February 2025. She had been invited for the ‘Sophie Redmond Lecture’, because she had painted a portrait of her. The lecture also involved an art project. The headscarf (angisa) Karen is wearing on the portrait below has a special meaning beacuasee of the way it has been folded: “Let them talk”.
During times of enslavement women used all kinds of different folding techniques, one of the secret, clever ways of communication for the enslaved people, besides for instance meaningful songs in their own languages, dances and drum rhythms.

On the photo of Karen and her portrait of Sophie Redmond, you can see a similar kind of folding of Sophie’s angisa.

Photos by Karen Jenkins