When Steve Bantu Biko declared that Africa would give the world a ‘human face’ I wonder if he considered an artist of Victor Kuster’s ilk – someone with an eye unafraid of what it sees, a heart snarled by gravity, a soul wholly empathic, that senses the fragility and grace of the burdened black body. Because there is no doubt that Kuster refuses sentimentality, stares unwaveringly into the ever-flickering coals of black experience. His purpose is to enlighten the disregarding and inhumane amongst us, to pull apart the blinkers that allow us to remain blind.
This is why Victor Kuster’s application – his optic – is so obsessive-compulsively precise. One grasps every dimension of a raw exposed face, the molecular fallibility of being. His portraits, while noble in their austerity, are never iconic. This is because Black Life and Experience is, for him, irreducible to any idealisation. His craft is naturalistic, his sightline unwavering. Humankind cannot bear too much reality, T.S. Eliot declared. Victor Kuster counters by saying – Yes, We Can.
