Maxime de Palm
Maxime de Palm
Maxime de Palm has been drawing from a very young age. It quickly became her form of self-expression and self-therapy. Born in 1992 on the Caribbean island of Curaçao she was always drawn to vivid colors. She moved to the Netherlands for her studies at age 19. Maxime studied Creative Therapy for one year and did three years of Fine Arts in Education at HKU. Due to her health she did not finish her degree. Now for the past five years she has been intensively working on researching and refining her own signature within contemporary art. Maxime’s sources have been the history of arts on the island of Curaçao, the cultures on the island of Curaçao, holistic life practices in the Caribbean.
She is an activist and portraits the worth of Black people, by documenting the BLM protests and the Black LGBT-community through photography since 2017. Maxime is currently based in Rotterdam where she’s working as a creative professional at The Niteshop, a bodega research center for Urban Culture/Neighborhood Embassy.
A big theme in Maxime’s work is mental health in a Black body. Asking herself: What is the spine of my people really made of? And how different should we go about matters as mental wellness? Maxime explores her own thoughts, ways and habits to expand awareness and connect to her audience. Leading by example to become a representative of cultural and social development for her native island and people. Because she strongly believes that in order to get real reparations for Caribbean people we need to go within to create more breathing space.
Maxime recognizes the many facets of the Caribbean culture. It is rich in multiethnicity, consisting of a lot of different habits and cultures, but put together have a code of conduct, interaction and language of endurance. This should be communicated and documented in creative ways that make the Black Caribbean people lean more into acknowledging who they are, what they bring, and to what extent achievements are possible.