8 Images d'archive des cartes postales (recto),
8 Images fictives des cartes postales reproduites (verso),
Imprimées jet d'encre, 9 x 14 cm chacune,
Vidéo 3 minutes
2015
“No race possesses the monopoly on beauty, intelligence, or innate power.”
Aimé Césaire
The historical context of the project Négraille is the International Colonial Exhibition in 1931 in Paris, France. The work, which extracts the book Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Martinique poet Aimé Césaire, and presents the postcards of colonial exhibitions ( including exhibitions in Marseille, France in 1906 and 1922), showcase the black poet’s observations and realizations for dwelling in the capital of his colonizer.
Young Césaire arrived in Paris in September 1931, and the international colonial exhibition was held in the same year from May to November, which he may have visited or indirectly obtained some information that the black people put on display there for visitors to see.
The colonizer had created a ‘human zoo,’ to convey a ‘savage’ image of those being colonized, and the impact brought on by this discourse of power imbalance has persisted till this day. Those highly political postcards make up the core of this artwork, and also the gaze and verses of the ‘imperial eye’ revealed by Césaire.