Upstream Gallery proudly presents its first solo exhibition with Joseph Thabang Palframan (1997, Namibia) in the main exhibition space. Palframan was raised in England and Botswana. He studied Fine Art at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in the Netherlands and Art History at Leiden University. Now based in Belgium, his practice spans social and studio-based projects, with a focus on painting.
Palframan’s work is deeply informed by his personal background. Of both African and European descent, he navigates the layered histories between, for instance, England and Botswana or the Netherlands and South Africa. This personal inquiry extends into broader questions of colonial legacies and their influence on contemporary life, especially within art history.
His current exploration of Pointillism examines its connections to scientific and technological advancements and its departure from realism. Much like digital screens, pointillist works rely on tiny dots that blend into cohesive images from a distance. Each dot, comparable to a pixel, only gains meaning as part of a larger whole. This visual language offers Palframan a framework for thinking about fragmentation, identity, and how visibility is constructed.
In his solo exhibition, Everybody Wants To Be A Rolling Stone, Palframan explores the tension between visibility and erasure. In his paintings, often portraits of individuals or groups, Palframan introduces interruptions: fields of white paint, dots or smudges that both obscure and complete the image. These gestures of erasure are not acts of removal but of transformation. White paint becomes a tool for disruption, layering meaning onto the surface rather than taking it away, such as a white dot interrupting an image, a pixel that falters, or a scratch showing traces of use.
Palframan’s work thus echoes the aesthetics of resistance: the deliberate interruption of dominant systems. When climate activists throw their paint over an iconic painting, that act can be seen as destruction or erasure. But what if we see it as a (temporary) new work of art, a painting being finished, or radically re-framed? Erasing is not the same as undoing. What is covered over is never gone: its presence lingers. A new image emerges, one that relies entirely on what preceded it. Palframan adopts a similar way of thinking: erasure as construction, absence as presence. His choice to “white out” parts of the image, visually and metaphorically, calls into question what is allowed to remain visible, and by whom.
For Palframan, the use of white is never neutral. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein noted in Remarks on Colour, we cannot imagine the colour white transparently. White is opaque; white hides what is hidden behind it. A parallel can be drawn to the many ways in which whiteness as a norm conceals other histories. The exhibition’s title references The Rolling Stones, whose sound was deeply rooted in African American blues. Despite acknowledging these influences, it is their name and image that dominate the cultural narrative. This dynamic of appropriation, where Black creativity fuels white recognition, persists in many cultural spheres, including the art world. As Palframan notes: “The use of paintings as substitutes for actual representation of black artists creates the impression of change. By exploring the erasing capabilities of white paint, my intention is to present more truthful images.”
“What if it turns out that most of the extraction of black culture within the framework of the art world is being perpetuated by black artists? And this extraction of black culture by black artists is that it’s the manifestation of internal class warfare.” Fred Moten
Fred Moten points out that internal class warfare among Black artists is often overlooked. How do we decide what counts as important art, and to what extent are our judgments shaped by expectations of how artists should act, speak, or dress?
Historically, censorship has been - if not the defining force - then certainly a constant presence in the lives of diaspora artists in Northwest Europe. From the use of Form 696 to target live music events in the 2000s, to the more recent removal of drill music videos from YouTube and the issuing of Criminal Behaviour Orders banning artists from performing certain lyrics, the trend continues.
The imagery of this painting is taken from the filming of a music video in Brussels.
Atomium/ An engineering spirit, 2024
Your Creps, My Creps, 2025 Installation with shoes, paint, rubber, metal Dimensions variable
A visit to a community elder, the photograph, 2024
“Speaking of erasure - in the M Museum in Leuven, two large paintings by Pierre Joseph Verhaghen hang in a staff-only stairwell. They’re too big to move, so the museum’s renovation had to happen around them.
One is Adoration of the Magi. I often pass it while working and find myself drawn to the ‘Black’ magus, whose head is wrapped in a turban or cloth. I wonder: could he have dreadlocks beneath it? And has he ever been depicted with them?
Historically, the Magi—especially the Black magus—have evolved in art. While earlier depictions showed all three kings as white, from the 12th century onward, the youngest was increasingly portrayed as African.”
Magi, 2025
Oil on linen
80 x 60 cm
Unique
a crowd, 2024
the background, 2025 plexiglass
200 cm
Unique
Baggage (with Portrait of Bryan Fuller as director and Orlando Jones as Anansi for American Gods), 2025
Installation with two bags and paintings
65 x 107 x 70 Unique
Bouquet (with audio from ‘diss-a-line performance’), 2025
Video 19 min. 14 sec.
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist’s proof (#1/3)
The Point, 2022 Video
10 min. 04 sec. Edition of 3 plus 1 artist’s proof (#1/3)
