Detail of Tropical Night (2006–present), by Christopher Cozier (version installed for Afro Modern, Tate Liverpool, 29 January–25 April, 2010). Image courtesy the artist
Vous Êtes Ici (You Are Here), an exhibition of work by thirteen Caribbean artists, curated by Dominique Brebion, opens today at Fondation Clément in Martinique.
Brebion quotes Édouard Glissant —
The Creole language says ici-là (“here-there”) doubtless to extend the forces of “here” towards the infinite. It often instists on ici-là minm (“right here there”), nowhere else but here, which is nevertheless over there or up there (whence the Creole language gets là minm, “right there” meaning “right now, immediately”), as if to make a clean break between “here” and its near or far surroundings
— and asks, “How do the artists of the Caribbean perceive this ‘nowhere else’ which is theirs, but which remains an exotic and faraway ‘over there’ whose location is vague to all but the natives?”
Vous Êtes Ici includes work by Thierry Alet, Alex Burke, Christopher Cozier, Annalee Davis, Polibio Díaz, Tirzo Martha, Trevor Mathison and Gary Stewart, Tony Monsanto, Ebony G. Patterson, Ingrid Pollard, Marcos Lora Read, and Oneika Russell.
