Kriss Munsya's ongoing photographic series The Eraser uses stylized tableaus and long-form poetic captions to reflect, erase, and resolve longstanding trauma.

At first glance, Kriss Munsya's highly stylized narrative portraits might come across as fashion editorials. A family basking in bright LA-feeling light, their faces obscured by flowers. A figure lying across a mid-century modern cabinet. A closeup of a face bedazzled in reflective circles. A car broken down in a parking lot, yet lit immaculately and also covered in elaborate floral arrangements. But there's a deeper story here. One seeped in pain, doubt, guilt, and an ongoing burden of racism – and trying to erase it.

Kriss Munsya was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and moved to Belgium at an early age where he felt othered by the white community, yet developed a sense of guilt for having a limited number of Black friends, and never dating Black women. Munsya channels these feelings into colorful pastiches that borrow and remix his memories, pairing them with long-form part-biographical, part-fiction narrative captions (which we’ve included below,) written in the third person to help him process it all.

A longtime fan of his work on Instagram, I connected with Munsya amidst his two latest exhibitions – up through the end of February in Vancouver, BC at Pendulum Gallery and online at Oarbt.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Kriss Munsya