Artist Bio
Brad Pinnock (b. 1998, Kingston, Jamaica) is an emerging artist who lives and works in
Kingston, Jamaica. He recently completed his final year of studies at the Edna Manley College
of the Visual and Performing Arts where he received his Bachelors in Fine Art in Painting. The
artist predominantly works using an interdisciplinary approach which involves painting,
sculpture, performance and architecture. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the CAGE
Gallery, Itopia Gallery and In Situ II. Pinnock tends to focus on ideas of human nature in his
work, particularly the relationship between the thinking and emotional self. He also enjoys
painting murals and has worked with Kingston Creative and Art Evolution on mural projects
throughout Downtown Kingston. Brad is also a recipient of the CB Facey, CHASE fund and
Careeras scholarship.

Artist Statement
The work deals with the human condition and how we constantly struggle to control our
desires. The piece explores the relationship between the thinking and the emotional sides of the
mind expressed through the metaphor of the horse and rider. The horse is a metaphor for
powerful emotional desires, while the rider is the rational side of our nature. I believe the
emotional side of our nature is much stronger than the thinking side. This imbalance is prevalent
across society as most people are driven by desires which make them highly irrational and
susceptible to manipulation. The gambling industry is just one area of society where this is quite
rampant. For black people, these psychological imbalances and effects of the propagation of self-
destruction are even more prevalent. As we have been separated from our Afrikan identity and
have been programmed to operate in a state of social amnesia.

My work questions the notion of freedom and the role of propaganda within our
postcolonial democratic society, freedom and its connections to the long history of exploitation
of black people through desires induced by various colonial powers, corrupt politicians and
corporations. The work criticizes the very framework of a democratic society and its tactics in
keeping the masses under control. It looks at ideas of consumerism and mass production which
play on the desires of the population creating insatiable greed and unequal distribution of wealth.
It also looks at ideas of religion and the control of information through mass media, which
further manipulates the emotions of the people and breeds fear within the society. Hence, the
work seeks to bring awareness to these issues in the hopes of sparking debates about the social,
economic and political change necessary for the creation of equitable social developments.