R. Bridges (From the series In the Malediction of Cham)

About Marielle Plaisir

Marielle Plaisir is a French-Caribbean multi-media artist who lives in the United States.  She combines paintings, drawings, installations and performances to present intense visual experiences.  Even when Plaisir does not consider she's part of the current contemporary trend of art activism from the western perspective, she does, however, submerge her within the borderline of philosophy and sociology, history and memory, to produce mnemonic devices. The series of paintings, installations, and performances explore the concepts of Meta / Count Narratives about domination and the construction of identity. At the end, she is a hybrid between activism and dreaming. Her most recent works dwell at the borderline of philosophy and sociology, history and memory to produce mnemonic devices. She incorporates what the French philosopher, Pierre Bourdieu, calls "symbolic violence," which consists of forcing the acceptance by an entire community of any act of power as legitimate. Her artistic outcome not only becomes an extraordinary research on materials, samples, and prototypes, but a mirror of contemporary assumptions. Critical of the current “social atmosphere', she underlines the common issues between US black history and Caribbean History: the labor movements, the fights for equality through literature, philosophy, and history. Through her work, she counters the concept of anti-blackness by presenting the color black, itself, as the subject of her paintings, creating backgrounds with lush imagery drawn from nature— constellations, natural forms, and flowers, inspired by both her Caribbean roots and her imagined ideal of a utopia without oppression. The works both resist and hope- they are reflective of Plaisir’s wish that her work will not only draw awareness to the importance of challenging harmful histories, but also speak to the interconnections of humans, the universality of fractured identities, and the power of recognizing and depicting inner worlds.

Recent solo exhibitions include " The malediction of Cham ' (Viewing room) DEBUCK Gallery ( New-York) (2021), "The malediction of Cham' TAFETA Gallery (London) ( 2020) ,  'Acta es fabula', Locust Projects, Miami (2020); ' Acta non Verba', Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2016);. Recent group shows include Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, Orsay Museum, Paris | Memorial Act (Guadeloupe, Caribbean)(2019); 'Visionary Aponte; Black & freedom', curated by Ada Ferrer and Edouard Duval-Carrié, La Havana, Cuba (2019) among many others.