Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Thèmes privilégiés :
- Approches méthodologiques, scientifiques et artistiques de la valorisation et de la gestion
des collections muséales.
- Histoire de l’art et patrimoine colonial artistique de la Caraïbe, analyse critique et historicisé
des œuvres
- Constitution des collections et leurs inscriptions dans leurs espaces d’accueil
- Relation des artistes contemporains aux collections coloniales caribéennes
Les articles sélectionnés donneront lieu à une publication en français dans le n°2 de la Revue
du Macte. Une version en anglais est également prévue. Les propositions d’articles en
français ou anglais, soumis au comité scientifique, sont à envoyer avant le 20 mars 2021 à
l’adresse suivante : lozerechristelle@yahoo.fr. Elles doivent comprendre un titre et un résumé
de 150 mots maximum et une courte biographie en français et en anglais de 100 mots.
L’ouvrage illustré sera constitué d’articles entre 15 000 signes et 20 000 signes.
Contact : lozerechristelle@yahoo.fr
Coordinatrices du projet : Christelle Lozère (UA LC2S), Laurella Rinçon (Mémorial Acte)
Comité scientifique :
Ana Lucia Araujo, professeur d’histoire, Université Howard, Washington DC
Alissandra Cummins, directrice du Musée de la Barbade, UWI
Mamadou Diouf, professeur d’histoire, Université de Columbia, New York
Christelle Lozère, maître de conférences en histoire de l’art, UA LC2S, Martinique
Denise Murrell, conservatrice associée au Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Laurella Rinçon, conservatrice du patrimoine, Directrice générale du Mémorial Acte, MACTe
Guadeloupe
Interrogating Memory, a shared art history of the Caribbean?
Today, the Caribbean space is facing a profound social, environmental, and political
crisis. The recent climatic and virological upheavals, as well as the impoverishment of
vulnerable populations, of irredentism (nationalisms and communitarianism among others)
amplified by the global Black Lives Matter movement. The legacies of its history of slavery,
with the wounds still open, feed into identity claims, militant postures, and destructive acts
against symbols of colonization in both public and digital spaces (e.g., commemorative
plaques, statues, and stereotypical images). A spirit of mistrust is spreading and becoming
popular, against an artistic and iconographic heritage that has been increasingly contested and
decontextualized. Artistic works linked to the world of slavery, imperialism, transatlantic
influence, or postcolonialism, nevertheless bear witness to a historical memory that needs to
be questioned in order to better understand and deconstruct it. Paintings, sculptures,
engravings, photographs, furniture, objects, and illustrated books that make reference to the
colonial past and have been conserved in museums, libraries, archive centers and private
collections around the world, are preserved to make the past speak, educate about
perspectives, arouse emotion, and make a path towards some form of resilience. While many
iconographic collections have been used, over time, to disseminate imperialist fantasies with
unbalanced relations, to popularize and entrench racialist theories (A. Lafont), there are others
which have also denounced, through the committed act of their creator, the violence of the
system that dominates peoples (M. Dorigny). Iconographic research in public and private
collections has moreover amplified the fraught histories of an obscured diasporan presence
within the artistic and cultural milieu, as trajectories of migration and modern life evolved
during the decades before and after territorial abolition (D. Murrell). The artists sometimes
had family relationships and close friendships with their models (D. Murrell, C. Lozère).
From the 18th century, the identification of island-based artistic and artisanal practices and
traditions, dedicated counter-discourse, exchanges and aesthetic mixtures in primary sources
by artists leaving in the Caribbean (V. Poupeye, A. Cummins, C. Lozère) and forces us to
question these works, the trajectories of artists as well as our own categorizations and mental
representations. In our world today, as the presence of the diaspora becomes more established,
it is time for a shared and decentralized history of art to be written. It is then a question of
interrogating how the memory and the narratives attached to them, produced by the work of
artists, engage with those of empires (British, French, Dutch and Spanish). Why is this artistic
heritage rejected or rewritten in today's society (S. Mintz, R. Price)? And under what
intellectual, economic, and social conditions were esthetic repertoires and artistic tastes
formed in a historical period dominated by slavery (S. Gikandi)? What degree of freedom did
artists have?
This work will examine the methodological, scientific, and artistic approaches in
promoting and managing these collections, and the fragile and broken memories within. The
goal of this work is to show how researchers, curators, and museum institutions now approach
the pro-slavery and colonial past as well as racial issues through a critical and historicized
analytical reading of works that sometimes testify to contrasting national positions. It will
examine the composition and provenance of these collections along with their functions and
their inscriptions in public, private, community, and family spaces, as well as the domains of
history, material and visual cultures, and the selected time periods (pre-slavery, slavery,
abolition and the fight for citizenship, post-slavery). Finally, contemporary artists will be
giving voice to their own relationships with colonial collections from rejection, appropriation,
diversion, deconstruction, and reconstruction of these forms.
Main themes:
- Methodological, scientific, and artistic approaches to the promotion and management of
museum collections
- History of the art and artistic colonial heritage of the Caribbean, critical and historicized
analysis of works
- Composition of the collections and their inscriptions in the spaces that house them
- The relationship between contemporary artists and the colonial collections of the Caribbean
The selected articles will be published in French in edition no. 2 of the Revue du Macte. An
English version is also planned. Proposals for articles in French or English, submitted to the
scientific committee, should be sent before March 20, 2021 to the following address:
lozerechristelle@yahoo.fr. They must include a title and an abstract of 150 words maximum
and a short biography in French and English of 100 words. The illustrated book will consist of
articles between 15,000 and 20,000 characters.
Contact: lozerechristelle@yahoo.fr
Project coordinators : Christelle Lozère (UA LC2S), Laurella Rinçon (Mémorial Acte)
Scientific Committee :
Ana Lucia Araujo, Professor of History, Howard University, Washington DC
Alissandra Cummins, Director of the Barbados Museum, UWI
Mamadou Diouf, Professor of History, Columbia University, New York
Christelle Lozère, Associate Professor of Art History, UA LC2S, Martinique
Denise Murrell, Associate Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Laurella Rinçon, Curator, Director general of the Mémorial Acte, MACTe Guadeloupe