Frederick Calmes (they/them) was born in Port-au-Prince Haiti, grew up in Curaçao, has lived in Amsterdam-East since 2013 where they work as an artist and designer. Frederick is polytheistic, they grew up with Catholicism and the voodoo religion.

 

Through voodoo, Frederick can come into contact with his ancestors and Frederick's spirit guides such as Hiro Kami, Darcko Koi, Jack Noir and Freda Alexandra. Frederick practices his own version of voodoo or as they call it, “Neo voodooism”. “Neo voodooism” means performing traditional voodoo rituals in an artistic form. One of the practices in this form is to offer the body to one of the spirit guides to convey a message in a visual image. On most of Frederick's works of art, you will see the name of one of these spirit guides. That means this work is a message from that guide to Frederick.