Noutoupatou, Mondes caribéens en mouvement
Private view: 18th november, 6 pm
A plus A Gallery, Venice, San Marco 3073
Flavio Delice, Samuel Gelas, Shamika Germain
Organised by A plus A Gallery in collaboration with Campus Caraïbéen des Arts supported by the Institut français and the Direction des affaires culturelles de la Martinique.
Curated by Paola Lavra

A plus A gallery and the Campus Caraïbéen des Arts are pleased to announce « Noutoupatou, Mondes caribéens en mouvement ». The exhibition, supported by the Institut français, and the Direction des affaires culturelles de la Martinique.coincides with the closing of the 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.

Noutoupatou, is a word, a sound, an invitation to look closely at the works of three young artists from the Caribbean art scene, from the islands of Haïti, Guadeloupe and Saint Martin, graduates of the Campus Caraïbéen des Arts of Fort-de-France in Martinique: Flavio Delice, Samuel Gelas, Shamika Germain. The exhibition is curated by Paola Lavra, anthropologist and lecturer at the Campus Caraïbéen des Arts and former student at the School for Curatorial Studies Venice, in collaboration with May Clementé, Director of the Galerie École of the CCA.

The project envisages a residency period for the artists in Venice, a masterclass proposed by Julien Creuzet and a series of initiatives aimed at creating a moment of exchange and encounter between the three artists and the city of Venice, both islands belonging to a vast archipelago that carries within itself an intricate network of relationships and connections to the world. The residency period will culminate with the opening of the exhibition in which the visitor will have the opportunity to confront that historical, sociological and cultural imprint that has profoundly marked the space and body, the plural and contradictory identity of a colonial society that constantly questions its origins, its affiliation and territorial status as a French island in the broader and more complex sphere of the Caribbean archipelago, its becoming in the globalised space of the Americas.

Today, the progressive deconstruction of the paradigm of Western modernity leaves room for new and singular paradigms of thought and action brought and translated by the specific language of contemporary art, inspired by the Glissantian poetics of relationship and « Tout monde ».

It is in this context that Flavio Delice follows the path and cartography traced by the inhabitants of Haïti in constant migration towards other shores. A land of origin that he never inhabited, ‘not native’, Haïti is the founder of a whole poetic and artistic imaginary that is built on the thread of the testimonies and stories of the fleeing Haïtians.

A real ‘ethnography of passages’ takes shape in the canvases and sculptures made from recycled materials that make up the daily life based on the ‘debrouillardise’ and the urgency of the Haitian population exposed to telluric movements and the permanent imbalance of a country at war, which is still paying the price for its revolution today. A notebook of a return to the land of dreams and childhood, the set of works is inscribed in the dramatic context of the current conflicts that agitate the island of Haïti.

Shamika Germain uses the same device of immersion and capture (images, words and sounds) to narrate another migration: hers, that of the ‘Enfants de la Ddass’, children entrusted to public institutions or raised in foster families and care facilities. Collecting the voices and silences of bodies and souls separated from their mother’s womb translates into a rich production ranging from photography to drawing and painting, from sculpture to filmic device, from installation to performance of handwritten texts. Hard materials such as iron and iron cement are opposed to the softness of wool in the manufacture of ‘cradles’ that allude to the emptiness and lack of a childhood without dreams.

Intimacy thus becomes the support of a singular and polymorphous plastic and graphic writing, in the creation of an aesthetics of trauma, translated by the term créolo bless, a form of tragic catharsis operated by the reproduction and materialisation of the original wound. The individual story of the ‘Pupilles de l’État’ narrated by Shamika echoes the story of the Bumidom and the Enfants de la Creuse (1962/1984), the vast mass migration operation carried out by the Office for the Development of Migration in the overseas departments of which the children of the DOM territories (Réunion, Martinique, Guadeloupe) were the object and collateral victims.

Finally, the universe of children is present and active in the imposing canvases of Samuel Gelas, vast group portraits that refer to the experience of each human being constituting a social group but also of a humanity of which childhood is the common denominator. The device of the class photo is distorted by the coded language of a bestiary that seems to illustrate the drifts of a society characterised by a hybrid identity, by the encounter/clash between multiculturalism and globalisation. Children are the society of tomorrow in the classroom that brings together and encourages the meeting of origins, religions and different systems of thought.

In a context of crisis and multiform migrations bringing disparities linked to the concepts of class, race and gender, the poetics of relationship, the theoretical summa of Edouard Glissant, subverts the concept of class and inspires an artistic project based on the strength of the collective. The class portrait inscribes the individual in a social group that strongly affirms his singularity but also claims belonging to the world, to being Tout monde, where ‘the relationship becomes the infinite sum of all differences’. (Cf. L’invitation au voyage, 22 November 2004, E. Glissant interrogé par Laure Adler).

Special guest is the artist Julien Creuzet, representing France at the 60th. Biennale in Venice, the protagonist of a masterclass retracing the various stages of his career, which began in Martinique.

The masterclass is organised by the Institut français, in collaboration with the Campus Caraïbéen des Arts. It is aimed at students from the Martinique and Caen Academies of Fine Arts, as well as students from the Lycée d’arts appliqués Victor Anicet in Saint Pierre. This event has been made possible thanks to the support of the Collectivité Territoriale de Martinique.

Founded on the égida of Aimé Cesaire in 1984, the current Campus Caraïbéen des Arts s is a Higher School of Art sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Communication, integrated into the higher education system of French art schools. The only French-speaking centre for the teaching of the visual arts in the Caribbean and Central America, the higher institute puts into perspective the European system with which it is endowed in order to fit into the broader territoriality assigned to it by history and the status of ‘French overseas territory’.

The exhibition can be visited from 18 November to 18 January 2025 at the Aplus A Gallery.

Contact Email
aplusagallery@gmail.com