Gilleam Trapenberg’s New Suns invites viewers to reconsider visual memories of the Caribbean. Born in Curaçao and based in Amsterdam, Trapenberg explores themes like belonging, representation, and identity through personal experiences and everyday life.

The series began instinctively when Trapenberg photographed sunsets during a shoot. These overexposed, almost abstract light stains transformed into a visual calendar reflecting his feelings of longing and distance. With colors ranging from warm reds and oranges to cool greens and blues, New Suns simultaneously critiques Caribbean fantasies and reveals the artist's complex emotional relationship with these images.

Trapenberg creates a familiar yet unexpected narrative through visual montages of local media images, signage, objects, and color fragments. Breaking yet not fully abandoning sunset clichés, the series inverts externally imposed representations of the region.

Trapenberg, as a Royal Academy of Art, The Hague graduate, has exhibited previously at Foam Amsterdam, FOMU Antwerp, and Futures. New Suns is among his most personal works, transforming light into a narrative tool.