ExhibitionAugust 30, 2022
Cimarronaje. The Art of Breaking One's Chains
The Maison de L'Amerique Latine presents until September 25 an exhibition dedicated to Marronnage in Suriname and French Guiana. Entitled "Marronnage. L'art de briser ses chaînes" (Marronnage. The art of breaking one's chains), the show brings together objects and photographs from the collections of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac; tembe art, contemporary painting and photography, textiles. Curated by Geneviève Wiels and Thomas Mouzard and based on an idea by Hervé Telámaque.
Through documentation, objects, and art, the exhibition analyzes the fact of Marronnage and the creation of shelters as a form of resistance to slavery. The wood from these forests or fields around the rivers was used to create houses, furniture, and other objects necessary for survival to create art by carving doors, seats, combs, etc., which they still call tembe. The tembe is an expression in everyday life and can also be seen in hairstyles, paintings, and textiles. Since 2020, it has been a practice registered in French intangible cultural heritage.
"In this art, we see geometric patterns. In fact, it is an art of expression; one might even say 'speech.' One of the artists in the exhibition who did the pediment of the Maison de l'Amérique Latine in Paris, Carlos Adaoudé, says that what he does is create geometric poetry."
In the catalog accompanying the exhibition, the curators state: "Our ambition is to show and contextualize the continuity and artistic creativity expressed by these peoples, through the presentation of objects produced in the first half of the 20th century, which have become museum collections, and an overview of current creations. Because contrary to what some ethnologists may have thought in the 1930s when they did not collect works of art, but pieces of "evidence" – fragments of studies of endangered peoples – the Maroons have continued to live in their own way and to create."
Featured artists and photographers Sherley Abakamofou, Carlos Adaoudé, Franky Amete, Wani Amoedang, Antoine Dinguiou, Karl Joseph, Antoine Lamoraille, John Lie A Fo, Nicola Lo Calzo, Feno Montoe, Ramon Ngwete, Gerno Odang, Marcel Pinas, Pierre Verger.
For more information visit: Marronnage, l'Art de Briser ses Chaînes
Through documentation, objects, and art, the exhibition analyzes the fact of Marronnage and the creation of shelters as a form of resistance to slavery. The wood from these forests or fields around the rivers was used to create houses, furniture, and other objects necessary for survival to create art by carving doors, seats, combs, etc., which they still call tembe. The tembe is an expression in everyday life and can also be seen in hairstyles, paintings, and textiles. Since 2020, it has been a practice registered in French intangible cultural heritage.
"In this art, we see geometric patterns. In fact, it is an art of expression; one might even say 'speech.' One of the artists in the exhibition who did the pediment of the Maison de l'Amérique Latine in Paris, Carlos Adaoudé, says that what he does is create geometric poetry."
In the catalog accompanying the exhibition, the curators state: "Our ambition is to show and contextualize the continuity and artistic creativity expressed by these peoples, through the presentation of objects produced in the first half of the 20th century, which have become museum collections, and an overview of current creations. Because contrary to what some ethnologists may have thought in the 1930s when they did not collect works of art, but pieces of "evidence" – fragments of studies of endangered peoples – the Maroons have continued to live in their own way and to create."
Featured artists and photographers Sherley Abakamofou, Carlos Adaoudé, Franky Amete, Wani Amoedang, Antoine Dinguiou, Karl Joseph, Antoine Lamoraille, John Lie A Fo, Nicola Lo Calzo, Feno Montoe, Ramon Ngwete, Gerno Odang, Marcel Pinas, Pierre Verger.
For more information visit: Marronnage, l'Art de Briser ses Chaînes
