Paris Noir - Panafricain

“Black Paris” relies on the Black condition shaped by legacies of slavery and colonization, which gave birth to Afro-Atlantic cultures. These merged into the “Black Atlantic” connecting Africa to the Americas and transforming racial stigmas into tools of liberation. The exhibition explores fifty years of artistic expression in Paris,nurturing the  Black consciousness.

Shuck One has been developing an aesthetic based on traces since 1979, when he first encountered the tags, slogans, and rallying cries left by independence fighters on the walls of his hometown, Pointe-à-Pitre, creating a material volume “reminiscent of seething flesh and guts”.

Shuck One, Re-generation 2025 (2025)

As a South African political exile, he faced harsh living conditions upon settling in Paris. Despite being unable to go back home, he kept depicting the daily lives of Black communities in South African townships, transforming these scenes into a dynamic realm of aesthetic exploration.

Gerard Sekoto, Self-portrait (1947)

Umbral is a totemic shield blended with Baule masks with Afro-Cuban symbols. As what Édouard Glissant described, the upward movement and the “mysterious order of the diagonal” evoke the ghosts of the “Middle Passage” implied by the transatlantic slave trade.

Wifredo Lam, Umbral (1950)

Bright colored cotton threads were used to present Martinican mythology. Inspired by Aimé Césaire's poem To the Serpent, the title reflects Coran's blending of the lush abundance of the Caribbean jungle with the fantastical elements of The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. 

Georges Coran, Délire et paix (1954)

During this period, over 150 African, African-American, and Caribbean artists developed pan-African aesthetics stemming from the Négritude movement. They expanded the scope of Abstraction, Surrealism, and Figuration, including Black figures that had been overlooked within art history. Alongside these artworks, it traces a potential map of Black Paris.

It revisited the Greek myth in which Zeus, disguised as a swan, pursues Leda — depicted here as a Black woman - creating a striking contrast between the invasive, immaculate shape of the bird and the figure of the woman.

Roland Dorcély, Léda et le cygne (1958)

The innovative “Big Sweep” technique uses the weight of one’s body to guide a push broom across a canvas laid flat on the floor. The composition, dominated by three bold strokes, features a striking interplay of red and black, punctuated by a vigorous blue stripe at the top.

Ed Clark, Sans titre (Vétheuil) (1967)

A series inspired by the Muslim festival of Tabaski (the equivalent of Eid al-Kébir in West Africa), during which a sheep is sacrificed. The sheep figures and human faces that emerge in the background, fused into the materiality of the painting, are barely distinguishable. 

Iba N'Diaye, Tabaski, la ronde à qui le tour? (1970)

The exhibition follows the history of African Independence movements, the civil rights in the US, and the fight for equality in France in the late 20th century. On the Left Bank, the Présence Africaine publishing house - founded in 1947 by Senegalese intellectual Alioune Diop-fostered a culture distinctive to the African diasporas. The Parisian scene brought different cultures and influences into direct dialogue. 

Based on the French magazine Paris Match, this piece depicts protests against the inequalities between mainland France and Guadeloupe. The unrest reflected the riots of May 1967, when violent clashes erupted on the island following a racist attack, resulting in the deaths of many protesters. The image is reproduced in its entirety in black and white on one side and in color on the other, as if still unfinished.

José Legrand, Sans titre (1975)

It tells the story of the tragic fate of three Black revolutionaries in Salisbury (now Harare), Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), during the early 1960s. Though they were granted a pardon by the Queen of England. they were still executed by hanging under colonial violence.

Gerard Sekoto, Sans titre (1964)

The work pays tribute to maroon ancestors - runaway slaves who established independent communities. By presenting thick hair, a symbol of life and immortality, and styling it with a feminist gesture of care and arrangement, Barthélemy allows the memory of these maroon slaves to endure.

Élodie Barthélemy, Hommage aux ancêtres marrons (1994)

The room was envisioned as a matrix and embraced the motif of Black Atlantic. Ocean was a symbol of the “abyss” created by the transatlantic slave trade, transforms into a disk— a metaphor for the Caribbean and the “All-World”, a concept came from Édouard Glissant.

Valérie John, Secret(s)… Rêves de pays…

Fabriqué à mémoire(s)… Palimpseste… (1998-2025)