Thomias Radin What a time to be alive, 2022

What a time to be alive is an oil painting on a linen stretched over a wood panel in the artist’s wooden frame.

The center of the composition is dominated by a muscular male figure wearing blue track pants with red and white stripes. The figure’s head and arms are rendered in abstracted black line drawings stressing the movement of the figure. The background is visually split into three main elements: marble, water, land, and sky. The upper part is composed of blue and yellow tones represents a pastel sky with a black sun with the white contours of a child’s profile. The middle part of the background uses green and off-white shades to suggest the land, and the bottom foreground is painted with darker blue and green shades to represent the ocean. The marble-like patterns in the foreground are painted in panels that are interrupted by a man’s face floating in dark black water and the blue figure of a foot. Two diagonal orange lines running along the figure’s sides create perspective and a sense of the passage of time. In the lower left-hand corner of the painting, the artist has included a message in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that roughly translates to “trust in a higher being.”

The wooden frame enclosing the piece features four half-circles with hand-carved symbols. On the top panel a Rose of Porcelain, one of the iconic flowers of Guadeloupe, is visible and on the bottom panel one can see a world map. The panels on the viewer’s left and right depict a dove with an olive branch and a hand pointing to the painting. The iconography of these panels is as important to understanding the work as the painted symbols.

Radin completed this work during the pandemic as he was trying to grapple with new political, social, and personal realities. The black moon sun depicts a sonogram of Radin’s child who was born as he finished the painting, whereas the orange lines represent war or bombings. The floating head and the finger in the panel refer to the feeling of staying just above the water, and the blue foot on its toes represents a central step in Gwo Ka, one of the traditional folk dances of Guadeloupe. Taken together, these symbols represent the artist’s personal struggle and a larger human struggle to find joy and stay safe despite external threats and conflicts occurring on the global scale.