Deeply rooted in the present: contemporary street art and palimpsest memories on Réunion Island

Abstract

This article explores the work of street artists Kid Kreol and Boogie whose creative endeavours with visual texts constitute (re)articulations of memory and identity in Reunion Island. In abandoned industrial zones and urban locations, their work consistently features Zamerantes (creole for wandering souls) who serve as the protagonists of tales and legends from the island’s oral and written traditions. The public venues chosen for their works catalyse the meanings and messages of the works while the works reconstitute the meaning of spaces and places of exhibition. These artists purpose is to manipulate the traditional in ways that are emphatically contemporary and designed to superimpose the real and imaginary, the past and present. This article argues that these (re)visions of memory take the form of a superimposition of traces that come to constitute a new composite structure. This layering can be a superimposition of not only two moments in time but also of places, spaces and cultures that produce a chain of signification. Hence, considering KidKreol and Boogie’s art as palimpsests leads to new understandings of memory as transcultural and intertextual. It is a critically dynamic and open space composed of interconnected traces of different voices, sites and times.