Tag: karim shuquem

Karim Shuquem is always reaching for something: sometimes a trumpet or a microphone, other times a paintbrush or a black block. Far more often, however, he’s reaching for things less tangible. The tag Shuquem painted in alleyways as a teenager still aptly describes his chronic condition: “A-N-X.” Angst. “There’s this thing that’s been bugging me about myself,” the multimedia artist and musician admits. “When examining my motives, I wonder: ‘Why do I feel the constant need to do something?’” Doing something has taken innumerable forms over his decades-long career as an artist: graffiti; zines; music; performance art; graphic art; education; and most recently, ever-evolving sculpture. In October, Shuquem completed his most recent public art installation, Die Kunstkammer. The candle-lit tower of 100 black blocks, dark images and decontextualized objects currently provokes and spellbinds curious onlookers at Glendale’s Adams Square Mini Park. “It’s a construction of matter or whatever reality is, but at the same time, it’s physically interchangeable as they change position every showing, creating sort of a relational parallel to whatever thought processes there are behind the work,” Shuquem explains. Our readers may better know Karim Shuquem by his ghoulish, Dionysian, trumpet-playing alter ego, Loto Ball, who fronts The