We are very pleased to present, in this still-sparkling new Miami facility, a group of works from a part of the Caribbean that – for lack of a better word – have been coined as “French.” For me this story starts about twenty years ago, when a group of Antillean artist friends in Paris asked me to join in an effort to present works in the lofty Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne in the city of Nantes, France. That exhibit, aptly named “Mawon, Marroon, Cimarron, Marron” was part of a larger effort initiated by the French authorities to commemorate the abolition of slavery in their colonies. In this context, the ideologies and conflicts that had allowed that perfidious human institution to flourish for centuries, and ultimately collapse, were taken down from dusty shelves and scrutinized once again. But something new was added to the discussion. Young contemporary artists were asked to join in the ongoing debates. For many of them, scars that should have been long healed were made visible in their art, available to the gaze under the medieval chandeliers of that mighty fortress. I promised myself then that I would one day work to bring their works to these shores. My only regret is that it has taken so long. This is a different group of artists than those of the Mawon exhibit, but they are animated by the same spirit. The works selected here express an exuberant will to assert their singularity. Most importantly, behind these creations lies an intellectual argument that belies the assertions made by many that those somnolent islands have and can only produce works lulled by the verdant seas that bathe their pristine beaches.
Each of them has, against the odds, managed to produce work that fits the concept of “Marronnage”. Working and creating art that from a distant periphery, they address issues that are as relevant today as they were two centuries ago: how to survive and keep one’s dignity in the face of a disparaging ethnocentric metropolis. The condescension from today’s center is a pale legacy of the professed blindness that sentenced millions of deported Africans to perish in a system justified with a veneer of civilization. Some might claim that the very existence of this exhibit shows that much has changed since then. Certainly plantation slavery is gone. But its sequels are still felt today, visible in many conflicts that rage throughout our planet. Today’s conflicts have to be confronted as forcefully as slavery was attacked back then. The quest for true liberty is as central to the human spirit as the quest for economic equality. But both remain as elusive as they did in past centuries. Perhaps the concept of the maroon – a group of self-liberated slaves who took to remote mountain refuges in faraway colonies, defined by skin color and inheritors of a bloody history – cannot be applied to this group of savvy contemporary artists. And yet something remains which can only be defined as a fierce commitment on their part to persevere and develop their discourse in absolute freedom.
Edouard Duval Carrié,
Artist/Curator, Artistic Director HCAA
