PARIS.- From the creation of the Présence Africaine review to that of Revue noire, “Black Paris” retraces the presence and influence of Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000. The exhibition celebrates 150 artists of African descent, from Africa to the Americas, whose works have often never been displayed in France before.

“Black Paris” otfers a vibrant immersion in a cosmopolitan Paris, a place of resistance and creation that gave rise to a wide variety of practices, from a new awareness of identity to the search for trans-cultural artistic languages. From international to Afro Atlantic abstractions via surrealism and free figuration, this historical voyage reveals the importance of artists of African descent in the redefinition of Modernisms and Post-modernisms.

Four installations produced especially for the exhibition by Valérie John, Nathalie Leroy-Fiévée, Jay Ramier and Shuck One punctuate the visit and provide contemporary insights into this memory. At the centre, a circular matrix takes up the motif of the Black Atlantic, the ocean as a disk, a metonymy of the Caribbean and the “Whole-World”, to use the term coined by Martinican poet Edouard Glissant, as a metaphor for the Parisian space. Attentive to circulations, networks and friendships, the exhibition proposes a living and often entirely new map of Paris.

A transnational artistic map

From the 1950s, Afro-American and Caribbean artists explored new forms of abstraction in Paris (Ed Clark, Beauford Delaney, Guido Llinás), while artists from the continent outlined the first Pan-African modernisms (Paul Ahyi, Skunder Boghossian, Christian Lattier, Demas Nwoko).

New artistic movements emerged in Paris, such as that of the Fwomajé group (Martinique) and Vohou-Vohou (Côte d’Ivoire) The exhibition also presents the first post-colonial movements of the 1990s, marked by the affirmation of the notion of ethnic mixing in France.

A tribute to artists of African descent in Paris

After the Second World War, Paris became an intellectual centre where figures such as James Baldwin, Suzanne and Aimé Césaire, and Léopold Sédar Senghor converged to lay down the foundations of a post- and de-colonial future. The exhibition captures the political and cultural etfervescence of the period, in the midst of struggles for independence and the fight for civil rights in the United States, by otfering a unique immersion in the artistic expressions of Négritude, Pan-Africanism and the transatlantic movements.

An exhibition between utopia and emancipation

The exhibition retraces half a century of struggles for emancipation, from African independence to the fall of the apartheid, and the fight against racism in France. “Black Paris” highlights the aesthetic power and political strength of those artists who, through their creations, challenged the prevailing narratives and reinvented a universalism “of ditferences” in a post-colonial world.

This political background provided the context, and sometimes direct frame of reference, for certain artistic practices. In parallel or in contrast, the exhibition also includes plastic experimentations that are often solitary but find aesthetic ties within the display.

Recognised as a key space of classical artistic training and, at the same time, a centre of experimentation, Paris held exceptional appeal for creators, whether visitors or residents. The city was a nexus of encounters and point of transit – particularly towards Africa – that lent itself to the affirmation of transnational trajectories.

An ambitious cultural programme

The exhibition is accompanied by a rich cultural programme in Paris and abroad. Conferences, publications, the acquisition of works by the Musée National d’Art Moderne and archives at the Kandinsky Library, thanks to the “Black Paris” fund, contribute to enhancing the visibility of Black artists. These initiatives also allow the creation of a lasting archive of militant and artistic anticolonial culture in a national institution.