“Paris Noir: Artistic circulations and anti-colonial resistance, 1950 – 2000” is on view at Centre Pompidou (Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004 Paris, France) until June 30, 2025. The exhibition includes installations by Valérie John (Martinique), Nathalie Leroy Fiévee (French Guiana), Jay Ramier (Guadeloupe) and Shuck One (Guadeloupe). [We are still trying to find a full list of Caribbean-rooted artists. Visit AICA SC [AICA Caraïbe du Sud] on Facebook for more information on individual artists.]
Short Description: From the creation of the Présence Africaine review to that of Revue noire, “Paris Noir” retraces the presence and influence of Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000. The exhibition celebrates 150 artists coming from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, whose works have often never been displayed in France before.
“Paris Noir” offers a vibrant immersion in a cosmopolitan Paris, a place of resistance and creation that gave rise to a wide variety of practices, from a new awareness of identity to the search for trans-cultural artistic languages. From international to Afro-Atlantic abstractions via surrealism and free figuration, this historical voyage reveals the importance of artists of African descent in the redefinition of Modernisms and Post-modernisms.
Four installations produced especially for the exhibition by Valérie John, Nathalie Leroy Fiévee, Jay Ramier and Shuck One punctuate the visit and provide contemporary insights into this memory. At the centre, a circular matrix takes up the motif of the Black Atlantic, the ocean as a disk, a metonymy of the Caribbean and the “Whole-World,” to use the term coined by Martinican poet Edouard Glissant, as a metaphor for the Parisian space. Attentive to circulations, networks, and friendships, the exhibition proposes a living and often entirely new map of Paris.
Echoing Paris Noir
Numerous art, culture, and educational venues in Paris and Île-de-France are hosting events that resonate with the exhibition and its themes.
For full description (in French), see https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/magazine/article/paris-noir-pour-une-histoire-panafricaine-et-transnationale-de-lart
For a list of related exhibitions and events, visit https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/surrounding-black-paris/echoing-black-paris
For more information, see https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/program/calendar/event/VRo249Y
Follow https://www.facebook.com/aica.sc for more information on individual artists in “Paris Noir.”
[Shown above: Gerard Sekoto, « Self-portrait » [Autoportrait], 1947, Huile sur carton, 45,7 × 35,6 cm, The Kilbourn Collection © Estate of Gerard Sekoto/Adagp, Paris, 2025; Photo by Jacopo Salvi.]
“Paris Noir: Artistic circulations and anti-colonial resistance, 1950 – 2000” is on view at Centre Pompidou (Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004 Paris, France) until June 30, 2025. The exhibition includes installations by Valérie John (Martinique), Nathalie Leroy Fiévee (French Guiana), Jay Ramier (Guadeloupe) and Shuck One (Guadeloupe). [We are still trying to find a full list of
