Quinsy Gario

Born in Curaçao and raised in St. Maarten, Curaçao, Gario now lives and works in the Netherlands. With a BA degree in Theater, Film & Television Studies, minoring in Postcolonial Studies and Gender Studies, he is started to follow the MA program Comparative Women’s Studies in Culture and Politics at the Gender studies department of the University of Utrecht but decided to focus on his artistic output instead.

Under the name T. Martinus he has been published in the NRC Next and performed in the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Great Britain. He has two poetry collections out and in November 2011 he won the Hollandse Nieuwe Theatermakers Prize 2011. As part of his prize, he developed the play The Principles of Certainties under the guidance of MC Theater for the Amsterdam Fringe Festival 2012. He also developed a play together with Glenda Martinus, his mother, for Over Het IJ Festival 2012. 

Under the banner of NON EMPLOYEES he makes art installations, video clips and gives workshops. Some of these clips have appeared on MTV here in the Netherlands. He is also a member of the pan-African art collective State of L3, an editor at the feminist journal LOVER and has written as a columnist for NiNsee. His most well-known work, Zwarte Piet Is Racisme (2011–2012), critiqued the general knowledge surrounding the racist Dutch figure and practice of Zwarte Piet (Black Pete), later bringing into the open the governmental institutional support that keeps the figure alive in the Netherlands.