Catalogue > At random

Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée – tout se transforme. L’héritage de l’esclavage dépouille ceux pris dans son cauchemar étouffant de la plénitude d’une vie. A travers des images tantôt en mouvement, tantôt statiques, la réalisatrice Charlotte Brathwaite en collaboration avec le photographe Malick Welli imagine les rêves et les cauchemars de l’érudit fait esclave Omar ibn Said. A travers des projections en mouvement et des photographies en grand format, l'œuvre se déploie comme une mélodie fantôme du cinéma. Elle fait le lien entre l’esprit volé de Said et la présence vivante de ses ancêtres, traversant l’océan, traversant le temps et l’espace. FORGOTTEN PARADISE transforme les ténèbres de la captivité en lumière : celle de la liberté, et d’une famille aimante.

Creator/Director CHARLOTTE BRATHWAITE is the recipient of a Doris Duke Award, Art Matters Award, Creative Capital Award, Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship Grant, a United States Artist Fellowship, multiple Map Fund Awards and the Princess Grace George C. Wolfe Award amongst others. Brathwaite’s genre-defying work illuminates the realities and dreams of marginalized people; people whose stories have been silenced, disappeared, and ignored. Dealing with subject matter from the historical past to the distant future, her work brings to light issues of social justice, race, power, and the complexities of the human condition. A director of classical texts, multimedia, site-specific works, dance performances, operas, concerts, film, and installations - her trans-disciplinary inquiry manifests in spectacles of color and music. Her works – presented across the globe from North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia – live in the deep time of aural/oral history and create an immersive experience for audience and performer alike which offers new perspectives in both form and content. MFA from Yale School of Drama and BA Amsterdam School for the Arts (the Netherlands). As an educator, she has taught and mentored at several institutions including the University of Fortaleza (Brazil), Barbados Community College (the Caribbean), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Amherst College, New York University, Stanford University amongst others. www.charlottebrathwaite.com ________________ Malick Welli is a Senegalese visual artist who lives and works in Dakar, Senegal. His work addresses themes of duality, spirituality, history and the restitution of memory, pedagogy and displaced identity. Welli is interested in the convergence of religion and material influences, economics and power dynamics, and how these elements shape visual culture. There's a quest for ecology and interdependence, and how seemingly independent events coincide and influence each other. Welli contrasts these material concerns of the community with individual spiritual needs. Welli's work has been collected and exhibited worldwide: "In Brilliant Light" at the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal and MuseumVolkenkunde in Leiden, Netherlands (2023-2024); "Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection" at the Chazen Museum of Art, Wisconsin, USA (2023); 1.54 Contemporary Art Fair, New York, USA (2023); "Sur le fil... " at 19M in Paris (2023) ; 1-54 African Contemporary Art Fair , Marrakech, Morocco (2023) ; Art x Lagos, Nigeria (2022), "Lightness of Being" a solo exhibition at Galerie Atiss Dakar (2022) ; "Les Invincibles" at the Biennale de Dakar (2022) ; Blackstar Film Festival, Philadelphia, USA (2022); 1- 54 Contemporary African Art Fair, New York (2021); EXPO CHGO, Chicago, USA (2019); Cairo Biennale, Egypt (2019); "Saint-Louis to St Louis", Barret Barrera projects, Missouri, USA (2019); AKAA: Also Known As Africa fair, Paris, France (2018); "Pour les Noirs et pour les Blancs , Hierro Desvilles Gallery, Lille, France" (2016).