"A quarter-century on, Exit Art keeps to an old-school definition of an alternative space. It presents art as a vehicle of social change; it tackles big ideas given short shrift elsewhere; it privileges those ideas over market-approved versions of fashion and beauty. In all these ways "Négritude" is a classic Exit Art show: ambitious ... and valiant in a way that won't go out of fashion."

Holland Cotter, The New York Times, July 2, 2009

NÉGRITUDE

May 20 – July 25, 2009

Opening: Wednesday, May 20, 7-10pm

// INFORMATION // ARTISTS // CURATORS // EVENTS // SCREENING SERIES // POSTER

STATEMENT  // SUPPORT 

Négritude, an experimental multi-disciplinary exhibition at Exit Art, explores the visionary 20th century political and artistic movement of the same name — coined by the Martinican poet, playwright, and politician Aimé Césaire in the 1930s — which flourished among Black intellectuals in post-World War I Paris and later spread to Africa, the United States and the Caribbean.

This exhibition seeks to define Négritude as an “archipelago”, with many “islands”, or perspectives. Négritude is an idea that developed in distinct ways in different countries due, in part, to language, culture, and the political climate. Exit Art — to reflect this diversity and to offer varying perspectives — invited four other individuals to organize this project in collaboration.

Négritude includes different “islands” created and produced by five individuals (Papo Colo, Tânia Cypriano, Rose Myriam Réjouis, Franklin Sirmans, Greg Tate) who are curators, cultural critics, scholars, filmmakers and artists, representing African-American, African, Caribbean and South American cultures. Over the course of several months, these individuals met to share their ideas and develop their “islands.” Each person was asked to produce their “island” of Négritude by presenting an exhibition of visual art; film screenings; music; performances; and/or public activities that detail their own experience, interest, or study of Négritude.

Négritude was a celebration of shared black heritage and an affirmation and valorization of pan-African identity and was a direct response to the effects of the African slave trade, French colonization of West Africa, and the New World plantation system. The beginnings of the Afro-Caribbean movement can be traced to literary movements in Puerto Rico and Cuba through the writing of Puerto Rican poet Luis Pales Matos, whose poem “Black Town” was published in 1927, and the Cuban Nicolas Guillen, although Cesaire's version of Négritude would eventually eclipse them. Under the influence of Césaire, the Guianan Léon Damas, and Léopold Sédar Senghor, the future president of Senegal, Négritude became a global movement, ultimately becoming radicalized and re-envisioned as a strict rejection of the domination of “the West”.

Showcasing several generations of African-American, Caribbean, South American and African artists, performers and writers, Négritude features work that examines the history, impact, and transmutations of this cultural movement. It looks beyond the historical Négritude movement to investigate also the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism in the 1920s and 30s and contemporary responses to the concept of “blackness, highlighting the post-Civil Rights generation of black artists who have new perspectives on racial identity and politics.

Through a series of mini-exhibitions, film screenings, performances, readings, stories and discussions, Exit Art will examine the historical effects and contemporary impact of Négritude by exploring its archipelago, island by island.

Conceived by Papo Colo. Produced by Papo Colo, Tânia Cypriano, Rose Réjouis, Franklin Sirmans, and Greg Tate.

ARTISTS

Papo Colo, Thornton Dial, Jr., Thornton Dial, Sr., Bessie Harvey, Lonnie Holley, Arthur Jafa, Andre Juste, Vladimir Cybil Charlier Juste, Ronald Lockett, Tierney Malone, Mario Cravo Neto, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Xaviera Simmons, Purvis Young, François Ziliff

ABOUT THE CURATORS

Papo Colo is a poet who uses concepts to produce art and an artist that chooses any medium, depending on its purpose. As Exit Art’s Co-Founder and Cultural Producer, he has curated more than 100 visual art, performance, theater, film and video projects at Exit Art.

Tânia Cypriano has been working between the United States and her native Brazil for nearly twenty years. Her films have won international awards including Best Documentary at festivals in New York, Los Angeles, Brazil and Burkina Faso. She has served in productions for Bill Moyers, Martin Scorsese Presents and television stations internationally. She has also co-organized film series with MoMA, the Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo, as well as the Grazer Kunstverein in Austria. This year she is launching docsBRAZIL, a distribution project for Brazilian documentaries in the US.

Franklin Sirmans is the curator of contemporary art at the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas. A former U.S. Editor of Flash Art and Editor-in-Chief of Art AsiaPacific magazines, Sirmans has written for several journals and newspapers on art and culture, including The New York Times, Newsweek International, Art in America, ArtNews, Grand Street and Essence Magazine. He is also an internationally recognized independent curator, editor and lecturer with specialized knowledge of contemporary African-American art.

Greg Tate, a cultural critic, journalist and author, has written extensively on racial identity in America and contemporary African-American culture. A longtime contributor to the Village Voice, he is currently writing a biography of James Brown.

Rose-Myriam Réjouis is a scholar of French and Francophone literature and an Assistant Professor of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College / The New School. She is the author of Veillées pour les mots: Aimé Césaire, Patrick Chamoiseau et Maryse Condé, and her work on the translation of Chamoiseau’s novel Texaco was recognized with the American Translators Association Lewis Galantière Prize for Best Book in 1998. Her recent co-translation, with Val Vinokur, of Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Love, Anger, Madness (Modern Library, 2009) was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship.

PUBLIC EVENTS

JUNE 18, 2009, 7-11pm

Négritude Party

Open Bar: 7-8pm

with Baye Kouyaté et Les Tougarakes, Dallam-Dougou, Afro-beat/Brazilian music by DJ Turmix, and African food vendors

Baye Kouyaté, a Malinese griot, praise singer and wandering musician, will perform on the tama (“talking drum”) backed by his band, Les Tougarakes.

Dallam-Dougou, a band that combines West African melodies with Hungarian gypsy rhythms will also perform. The band is composed of Raul Rothblatt (composition, cello, African fiddle, bass); Abou Sylla (balafon); Tzafrir Lichtenshtein (drums); Kalman "Ocsi" Magyar (fiddle); Avram Fefer (clarinet, saxophone); Sylvain Leroux (flutes); Abdoulaye Dioubate (guest vocals).

TUESDAY, JULY 21

7 – 9pm

$5 Suggested Donation. Cash bar.

Négritude Dialogues

In these intimate, public conversations, participants in the exhibition Négritude will talk with an artist, scholar or cultural producer of their choice about various aspects of the Négritude movement and Black identity. These in-depth conversations will contextualize the exhibition within larger discussions about the politics and culture of Blackness, from the Americas and the Caribbean to Africa.

7pm:

A Conversation with Négritude artists Vladimir Cybil Charlier Juste and André Juste

Moderated by Thomas C. Spear, French and Francophone scholar and Professor of French at Lehman College (CUNY) and at the Graduate Center (CUNY).

Vladimir Cybil Charlier Juste and André Juste have exhibited internationally, including in the 2007 Venice Biennial (Italy); the 2004 Cuenca Biennial (Ecuador); at the Museo de Arte Moderno (Puerto Rico); the Jersey City Museum (New Jersey); and the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York).

8pm:

Racial Spacial Facial Glacial: A Group Lecture on the Architectonics and Antipsychotics of 4th-Stage Négritude and other Dub Strategies

A conversation with ('VËRSION'), the newly formed collective of Xaviera Simmons, Arthur Jafa, and Greg Tate.

Greg Tate, a cultural critic, journalist and author, has written extensively on racial identity in America and contemporary African-American culture. As co-curator of Négritude, he presented a three-room “Black Mystery Anti-Panopticon,” envisioning Négritude as a “place” for mystery, funk, music and soul. A DJ shrine, created by Tate and the artists Xaviera Simmons and Arthur Jafa, provides a site for performances within the exhibition.

THURSDAY, JULY 23

Doors: 7pm

Saul Williams: 7:30pm

Burnt Sugar: 9pm

$5. Cash bar.

Saul Williams, respected poet, performer, musician and actor, will read several works by Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, a founder of the Négritude movement, and perform a selection of his own poems. Williams, known for his leading role in the acclaimed film Slam, has published four books of poetry, released four albums, and performed at hundreds of concert venues, universities, poetry clubs and museums. His newest album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust!, was released in 2007 to critical acclaim. For more information, visit http://saulwilliams.com .

Burnt Sugar, The Arkestra Chamber, was formed in 1999 by Greg Tate. Conceived as a contemporary version of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew band, the group explores the connective tissue binding jazz, rock, funk, 20th century composition, and African music in a lyrical, seductive, exploratory and improvisational manner. For more information, please visit http://www.burntsugarindex.com .

TICKETS: $5 Advanced tickets available for Saul Williams and Burnt Sugar.

WEEKLY SCREENING SERIES

Curated by Tânia Cypriano

Every Friday at 6pm

CLICK HERE FOR A COMPLETE LISTING OF FILMS AND INFORMATION.

POSTER

STATEMENT

NEGRITO BONITO

By Papo Colo

The purpose of this exhibition is to dramatize an idea (yes, an exhibition is a stage for the public)
born thousands of years ago. Why do we have different colors of skin? Climate? Pigments?

Certainly not social behavior or religion.
It is a scientific fact that Africa is the cradle of civilization.
And in the beginning there were no other humans other than those people burned by the sun that developed dark skin for protection from the sun. Scientists concluded that the first humans of Africa populated the whole world.Négritude then is an international physical expression, the genes of Africa were remixed and created different shades of color from black to white. Confirming that race is the multiplicity of color...we are all mixed…purity is in the mixture.

Social influences indoctrinate us with the different values of skin color.
Before the discovery and occupation of the New World there were white and black slaves,
but with land to conquer, fresh bodies were needed to work the richness of the Americas and exterminate the ancient lands of native populations. Africa and the Africans were a new business to exploit, explore and multiply. Power must justify its behavior, and that was race.
With the slave trade populating the Americas, inferiority was imposed on Africa.

Négritude is in us from the beginning. Great poets have this first language, that combines words to synthesizeprimal ideas that are wrapped in a unique way to surprise us. Aimé Césaire is one of those poets. With his visionary way of naming something as abstract as race,he reminds us that naming is possession, but naming a race is inventing a tradition and he did it with organized words, poetry. Return to the Native Land, his opus poem, can become anything that you want including an exhibition.

Art is pregnant with science and history.

Aesthetics change, depending on how power understands it.

“Négritude is an ensemble of characteristics attached to the black race.” That’s what my French dictionary says, but for me, one of its many definitions is that Négritude is a condition of the hybrid state that defines us after the colonization of the New World. And today it is more relevant because of the multiple emigrations from the “colors” countries to the “white” ones. This word, Négritude, names and appropriates everything that it touches. Négritude is a net word, a word that connects.

A DNA code of pigments replicated billions of times.
We are the same with different shades of color.
Populations explode, mix up the crowd and Négritude emerges. With the gene of race running away from the lies of history, the invention of race was born away from the race of light against darkness,holding the gene of memory, with elegant panache, inside and outside of any aesthetic.

Yes, Négritude has grown with us because it is us.

Historical propaganda teaches us that Europe is a different civilization than Africa and the Middle East, but anthropology shows us that it is not completely the truth, because the Mediterranean Sea is shared by these continents. Influences, ideas and wars cross this sea as physical and spiritual messengers of our hybrid civilization, today well defined in our Americas.

Négritude is a word that is a world.

EXHIBITION SUPPORT

This exhibition is supported by National Endowment for the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Catharine and Jeffrey Soros, Museum Program at the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, Dedalus Foundation, and New York Council for the Humanities. General exhibition support is provided by Bloomberg LP, Carnegie Corporation, Jerome Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs & City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Starry Night Fund at The Tides Foundation, Exit Art’s Board of Directors and our members. Special thanks to Ron Shelp and Selig Sacks.