A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language. What we are getting at becomes plain: Mastery of language affords remarkable power.1
By language, I mean words, sounds, voice, intonation, gestures, sighs, silences and posture. I have been interested in the great leaders of Afrodescendant and African communities and how they communicate with a majority when they are in a "minority" position.
1. Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, white masks. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca
Michaëlle Sergile is an artist and curator working mainly on texts and books from the postcolonial period from 1950 to the present. Her artistic work aims to understand and rewrite the history of Black communities, and more specifically of women, through weaving. Often perceived as a medium of craftsmanship and categorized as feminine, the artist uses the lexicon of weaving to question the relationships of gender and race.
She has exhibited at the ArtHelix gallery in New York, at the Miami Art Fair and has participated in several group exhibitions in Montreal including Place des Arts, Art Mûr gallery and the Conseil des Arts de Montréal. She has also received several prizes and scholarships during her academic career, including a grant from the Fonds de recherche Société et Culture du Québec (FRQSC).
She is currently project manager and curator for the Nigra Iuventa platform where she co-curated the exhibition Subalternes created by and for black women in Quebec, as well as the exhibition Je sais pourquoi chante l'oiseau en cage at the Darling Foundry, the Centre culturel Georges-Vanier and the CDEx last February.
Text on the work by Josephine Denis (29 October 2020)
Michaëlle Sergile brings James Baldwin and his profound insight to the forefront in Gestures: Body Movements in Political Discourse, an installation of three interventions exhibiting an exchange between Baldwin and Paul Weiss, originally seen on the Dick Cavett Show in 1968.
We are first greeted by Baldwin's voice, which fills the spaces in between the installation pieces, leaving little room for detachment; we are confined to his perspective, without feeling restricted. Sergile's interventions bear witness to the exponential potentiality of Baldwin's assertions, carefully sidestepping the unproductive romanticism that often leadens the stories of those who first stirred the civil rights movement. In bringing our attention to the physicality of speech, Sergile gives form to the resistance inherent to the expressions of Black bodies. Marveling with what Baldwin's body holds and emanates, she creates a portrait of the orator in action.
Throughout this exercise in (re)phrasing, Baldwin remains captivating in the interview excerpt that makes up one of two video works. Sergile has chosen to add a black screen that disrupts the footage of the other speakers. This display-colloquially referred to as the black screen of death signaling a total system failure-is a searing commentary on Weiss' and Cavett's refusal to index the depravity of the national environment in which they thrived. Our focus is zeroed in on Baldwin-his eyes, his eyebrows, the creases in his forehead, his sighs, his elevated chin, all swiftly casting off provocation and denial before he even utters a word.
His words have become scripture; he grew into himself by fostering his positionality, firmly rooted in his convictions. Now, those of us who receive him as an ancestor can refuse to engage in debates he has already settled. His speech acts are an inheritance.
Hanging high on a wall in front of the video work, in this narrow exhibition space, is a portrait of Baldwin, his face and arms heavy with exaltation/exasperation. To create this portrait, printed on cloth with a tufted extension of his upper body, Sergile uses this punchwork textile technique with its dense layers of materiality giving a hinting form to Baldwin's impenetrable force. The heavy, tight weaving of dense wool is an inside-out look at the pulsating obligation to divulge ruminations on Black people's lived experiences.
The jolting sound of the tufting tool has been woven into the second video work alongside a compilation of still images of Baldwin's hand gestures in rapid sequence. That velocity and the noise of the machine impart the urgency and vehemence with which Baldwin transmits the horrifying characteristics of racial dynamics under American empire. Measured and steady, Sergile's arrangement salutes the adept orator, while the drone of the tufting gun speaks to the puncturing violence Baldwin contends with. This installation is a kinesthetic experience through which the artist troubles the affective nuances of omission & emphasis.
James Baldwin defines the role of the artist as "exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see." Sergile shares the intimacy with which she is moved by Baldwin to revisit, hone in, channel, and render with unrelenting love and detailed perspective.
Born in Haiti, raised between Port-au-Prince New York, and currently residing in Tiohtià:ke /Montreal, Josephine Denis is a curator and writer whose practice centers BIPOC communities in the creation and narration of our own spaces. She advocates for Black diasporic art, critical interactions, and institutional transformations through which artists and publics can co-create affective networks of radical socio-political change.
A graduate from McGill University with a BA in Art History, Josephine is currently Head of Public Programs and Outreach at SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her writing appears in the catalogue Relations: Diaspora and Painting (Phi Center) and in the upcoming issue of The Brooklyn Rail. Josephine's writing was also included in Raoul Peck's 2014 documentary, Fatal Assistance. In the Fall of 2020, Josephine curated a group show entitled "This Is What Compels Me To Compel Them" (Le livart) participated in a writing residency at Ada x, in the context of Deanna Bowen's first Quebec-based exhibition, Harlem Nocturne.
Her previous work placements include Serpentine Galleries (London, UK), Faurschou Foundation (Beijing, China), and Lehmann Maupin, (New York, US). Josephine's work is embedded in communal dialogue and is made possible by the guidance of her kin.