The heritage of anthropological museums, monuments and steles, linked to colonial and post-colonial histories, are the research engines for the sculptural landscapes she elaborates. With the support of Western and overseas (Haiti) tales and legends, Gaëlle Choisne reveals the traces of a mute history, and thus summons the idea of a local exoticism.

With its title evoking one of the world’s largest slums located in Haiti, the installation Cité Soleil (2014) functions as the backbone of this exhibition: a veritable landscape that is both strangely chaotic and ordered, this protean structure gives rhythm to the space while serving as a support for the presentation of sculptures, photographs, and videos, among which Cric Crac, which gives its title to the exhibition. In Cric Crac #1 (2013), Gaëlle Choisne went to Haiti to film two guides at the colonial museum in Moulin-sur-Mer who tell stories about zombies – an eminently political and colonial figure – and Haitian werewolves.

She continues this investigation in Cric Crac #2 (2015), which documents and exposes some of the complexities of Haitian culture as it confronts the weight of dominant imperialism. The artist’s attraction to the blending of cultures is reflected in a series of works produced especially for the exhibition, inspired by the ancient heritage of the City of Vienna.

Between occult fables and objective science, between Caribbean Haiti and and ancient Vienna, Gaëlle Choisne proposes to the visitor to wander in a universe rich universe of multiple references, constituting by that very fact as many tracks to to understand a post-colonial universe that constantly oscillates between between fiction and reality, nostalgia and fantasy.

Exhibition realized with the kind collaboration of the Centre de Restauration et d’Études Archéologiques Municipal (CRÉAM), and the Museums of Vienna.

THE ART PROJECT: MONUMENT AUX VIVANT·E·S

Several generations of men and women who became slaves were transported, traded, humiliated and mutilated, mistreated, killed without burial and died without a name. How can we mourn them? Inspired by the Kübler-Ross model – which theorizes the concept of mourning as a series of phases supposed to lead to its acceptance – Gaëlle Choisne deploys within the Palais de la Porte Dorée, the former Palace of the Colonies built for the 1931 Colonial Exhibition, a series of gestures, works and moments as so many stages destined to the construction of a Monument to the living – among which a sculptural work that will be installed, in 2023, within the permanent exhibition path of the museum. The former Palais des Colonies carries a painful and conflicting history that we must bring to light in order to question and propose some ways to try to honor our ancestors.© D.R.

CHOC – FIRST STAGE OF MONUMENT AUX VIVANT·E·S
Monument aux Vivant-e-s – CHOC – takes on the traumatic historical process of the slave trade and slavery. Since 2006, France has chosen May 10 to commemorate the memory of these crimes against humanity and their abolition. This year, on this day of mourning, Gaëlle Choisne sets up the space of the Forum du Palais to invite the public to an evening of communion and contemplative meditation played and sung, in a minimal sculptural gesture. Accompanying naturally the mourning from its beginnings, the song, the music and the psalmody transmute the energies of the shock into collective moments of sharing and solidarity.

With :
– Maré Mananga, an amateur Afrofeminist choir that expresses the repertoires of the Afro diaspora.
– Christelle Oyiri aka Crystallmess, DJ, producer, writer and artist, concerned with bringing to light past and present sub-cultures.
– Sophye Soliveau, a singer and harpist who has been nourished by Afro-American music since childhood, is a member of the Seksion Maloya collective (traditional music from Reunion Island) and Àbájade (an Afrojazz group with Cuban influences) on lead vocals, choirs and percussion. She also directs several vocal ensembles (Maré Mananga, Oshun and the Choral Workshop).
– And the backing singers Kelly Carpaye, Eden Tinto Collins, Joseph Decange, Frieda, and Pierre Et La Rose.

Blue Lights in the Basement is the first solo exhibition by French-Haitian artist Gaëlle Choisne in the UK. Describing her work as a ‘kaleidoscopic prism with multiple entries of meanings and signs’, Choisne’s practice revolves around the creation of opulent environments in which the artist interweaves myriad references – from occult fables to objective sciences, through to Caribbean and European literary traditions, queer culture, music and popular imagery –, and media, including sculpture, photography, video, text and sound.

In Blue Lights in the Basement, Choisne presents a series of hybrid assemblages made of a wide range of materials such as wood, textile, ceramic, photographs and moving images, as well as a vast array of found objects, including coins, banknotes, deer antlers and cigarettes. Layering a multitude of narratives, the artworks on display explore the relationships between human beings and their environment – whether it be social, cultural or natural –, analysing the effects that these interactions have on subjectivity. To do so, the artist brings a historical perspective to her own experience, establishing poetic parallels between her personal life, her relationship to sexuality and her skin colour, and the history of Haiti, specifically the Haitian Revolution (22 August 1791–1 January 1804).

Throughout the exhibition, Choisne draws inspiration from the women who played a role in the Revolution and the broader history of Haiti, such as slave and soldier Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière, who served in a male uniform at the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot (4 March–24 March 1802), or Catherine Flon, who sew the first Haitian flag in 1803. Often muted by historiography, these female voices embody a spirit of bravery and rebellion, affirming the existence of those left out of dominant historical narratives. Through the evocation of these providential figures, the artist questions the way in which processes of invisibilisation operate, drawing our attention to what happens beyond the regimes of the visible and the tangible – in both socio-political and spiritual realms, which Choisne’s transversal gaze tightly interlinks.

Indeed, a logic of crossing, of passage between perceptible and ineffable worlds, spans the exhibition, such as, for instance, in Anathem (2022), a group of three assemblages evoking the form of doors or thresholds. Made of pine wood, ceramic, dyed fabric and printed textile showing, alternatively, a hand (the maker), a magician and a public demonstration (the revolted), the Anathem series evokes the intricate links between practices calling for socio-political justice and rituals aiming to reach a spiritual ‘beyond’.

These connections between history and spirituality, politics and beliefs, also appear in Echo of your EGO (2022), an installation in which cigarettes produced by one of the oldest brands of tobacco (Sobranie, established in London in 1879, smoked by the Imperial House of Russia and the Royal House of Great Britain, owned today by Japan Tobacco), materially encapsulate residues of colonial times. These cigarettes are presented on blocks of ceramic covered by an enamel made of crushed glass taken from hospital needles, recalling the cyclical dance of life and death, as in a vanity.

Similarly, the film Silent Primitive Accumulation (2018–22), which is played on mute to remind us of those who remain voiceless, is presented as part of a series of installations in which the screens are supported by metal, root-like feet, giving the impression of an energetic web sprawling from the underground. Here, the notion of ‘basement’, as suggested by the exhibition title, seems to refer to these unconscious forces that even those who have been disempowered can potentially access.

Indeed, borrowed from an album released by African American singer and activist Roberta Flack in 1977, Blue Lights in the Basement evokes the deep, sensual atmosphere of clubs when slow music is played. It also refers to David Hammons’ Concerto in Black and Blue, presented at Ace Gallery, New York, in 2002, a sensory experience where ‘light failed to provide full visibility, and colour remained helpless in grounding materiality’, bringing a singular prism to questions of race, essence and spirituality.

Similar ideas are explored in Choisne’s exhibition, where the colour blue becomes the symbol of what has been made imperceptible or impalpable, but whose presence continues to haunt reality. Attempting to conjure the effective power and potential of invisible energies, her artworks are not conceived as inert objects, illustrative or evocative of external ideas, but as force fields, composed of both physical and immaterial components. Within this framework, the image of the basement is used to conjure the idea of a hidden space where reproved practices, such as queer cruising, persist in existing; a space where, acting as the glue that holds the building blocks of her assemblages together, love is the ultimate sediment.

Second step in the construction of the Monument aux Vivant-e-s by artist Gaëlle Choisne after CHOC, DÉNI associates the Aquarium to the unconscious, seat of this phase of the grieving process.

Several generations of men and women who became slaves were transported, traded, humiliated and mutilated, mistreated, killed without burial and died without a name. How to mourn?

The stage of Denial induces an unconscious, hidden dimension that we are not ready to see. The Tropical Aquarium becomes the privileged metaphorical place of the unconscious to develop this aspect of mourning. Located in the basement of the Palace, the Aquarium recalls the unconscious and subterranean dimensions of the human being as well as the shadowy parts of the being.

Here, the artist presents denial, the moment when it is difficult to become aware of what has happened. This phase of mourning is materialized by a series of engraved shells (reminiscent of those used in the West Indian trade) scattered in the aquariums of the Palais. The words and phrases inscribed are taken from a poem by Édouard Glissant from the collection Le Sel noir (1983). Some of the messages are directed towards the fish, others are visible to all.

Fourth step in the construction of the Monument aux Vivant-e-s by artist Gaëlle Choisne, FESTIVAL DÉPRESSION mixes cinema, music and performance to address the « mental decompression » caused by the violence suffered by racialized people.

In the grieving process, depression is the troubled moment of latency when one has no strength or hope. « Depression » also refers to the idea of decompression. For Gaëlle Choisne, the denunciation of the « generalized state of depression » among certain racialized people, linked to racism and the injustices they face, leads to a beginning of mental decompression.

In the Forum, the artist invites to a kind of collective care performed, thanks to the music and the word of her guests.

Gaëlle Choisne pays homage to the Haitian composer Carmen Brouard through her work And the sea says nothing, a silent film game, accompanied by musicians Lutxi Nesprias and Julen Zelaia who play La sonate vodouesque.
On the stage work Rainbow Tears, author and actress Jo Güstin celebrates black and queer culture by taking the audience on a journey through its legends. Ndayé Kouagou, artist and performer, follows her with an enigmatic performance based on his writings on discomfort, power and vulnerability.

Gaëlle Choisne will present the Frankfurt debut of her long-term project “Temple of Love” (2018-ongoing) and transform the historic Villa 102 into an art space. A meticulous collector of objects acting at the margins of photography, the artist weaves individual memories with social observations to create eclectic installations, videos and performances. Drawing on her personal history and French-Haitian heritage, Choisne’s works often delve into themes of self-healing, spirituality and social interaction. Choisne regards her artistic practice as part of a network of ideas and people, frequently engaging in collaborations and integrating literary and scholarly allusions into her work. For the “To Hide” edition of the long-term project “Temple of Love”, the artist once again refers to a chapter from Roland Barthes’ “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments”. The site-specific installation takes on a new form with each presentation. Choisne developed the exhibition for the first time during her one-year residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, in cooperation with KfW Stiftung.

The exhibition Temple of Love. Cœur concludes the residency of Gaëlle Choisne (Cherbourg, 1985) at Scuola Piccola Zattere. Here, new commissions, site-specific interventions and existing works by the artist are put in dialogue with a selection of paintings by Haitian artists from the Jean-Marie Drot collection. 

Temple of Love is a long-term project (2018 – ongoing) developing across successive chapters and drawing from Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (1977). Through an approach that combines multiple media, techniques and materials, Choisne builds a progressive, evolving narrative that shapes spaces of coexistence and collaboration, hospitality and affection.

What the artist calls a “temple” is this fluid configuration that is temporarily embedded into the architectural and institutional context of the museum, materially and symbolically turning it into a place where new rules and bonds can emerge. The ritual and sacral connotations are summoned by Choisne not to reproduce the auratic dimen- sion of the museum, which derives from acts of separation and classification, but, on the contrary, to hybridize forms of knowledge that belong to different spheres, cultures and histories. 

In the new chapter of Temple of Love, entitled Cœur after the eponymous entry from Barthes’book, the spiritual and affective connection between the body and the outer world is explored through the symbolism of the house: the architecture of the domestic that hosts, embraces, protects. The exhibition space is reconfigured as a complex ecosystem, each room embodying a chakra, the centers located along the spine that regulate the flow of vital energy in the body. Starting with the heart, positioned at the center of museum space, the exhibition unfolds in two directions creating a circular, immersive flow, an invitation by the artist to a healing procession. The identification between architecture and body resonates in the word Lakay, meaning both house and home in the Creole language, that is depicted as a place of encounters, of spoken words, of intimate moments both sad and joyous in Haitian painting. The homeland of the artist’s mother, and a central reference throughout the artist’s work, Haiti is the guest of honor of this project, invited through the works of eighteen Haitian painters belonging to the private collection of French writer and documentary filmmaker Jean-Marie Drot. The works depict everyday scenes of collective activities and country life, blending with allusions to the ceremonies, rituals and symbols of the Vodou religion. Amplifying the scenes, figures and forms found in the paintings, the exhibition weaves a dense, affectionate and generative dialogue with the spiritual mysticism of Haitian art.

The Jean-Marie Drot collection is an idiosyncratic one comprising more than 500 artworks that Jean-Marie Drot (1929-2015) gathered during his lifetime travelling as a journalist and producer for French television. A pioneer in the use of audiovisual material in culture, Drot became well known thanks to his 1962 series The hot hours in Montparnasse in which he interviewed important figures coming from the Dada and Surrealist movements, such as Man Ray, Cocteau, and Duchamp. However, Drot’s passion focused on naif art, especially self-taught artists, from 1968 when he dis- covered an exhibition catalog with artworks by Yugoslav naif painters. This was the starting point for many adventures that led Drot to seek creative work outside the major artistic movements and Western centers of art, in places such as Bulgaria, Peru, Brazil, Haiti, Greece, Egypt and Japan. Drot’s special interest and expertise in Haitian art led him to direct the video documentary Haiti: A Painted History (1997), and to curate several exhibitions and catalogs, including Journal de voyage en Haïti au pays des peintres de la fête et du vaudou (1974), Haïti: Art Naïf, Art Vaudou (1988) and Haitian Painters: The Encounter of Two Worlds (1992). 

The Drot collection is hosted on the Cycladic island of Ios in Greece in the atypical “house-sculpture” – designed by the Greek artist and his lifelong friend Yannis Yaitis – and in a separate building inside the house complex. It is entitled the Museum of Friendship and, as of today, remains closed to the public. The collection was included in this exhibition as a first attempt at activating it through the prism of contemporary art at the initiative of the curator Eva Vaslamatzi, who has undertaken in-depth research into the Drot collection.

Irene Calderoni and Eva Vaslamatzi