Art Museums are too White

Several days ago, I did an experiment at the Centre Pompidou art gallery in Paris and walked around their main collection and kept walking until I found a painting by a person of color and/or from the Global South. It took me over 15 minutes to find a piece of modern art work that met this criteria. So I decided that if I wanted to see artworks by people of color, I had to go to an institution that celebrated work the creative contribution of people of color/people from the Global South. So I took a trip to the Institut du Monde Arabe and I mostly prioritized the works of Arab women—with a couple of exceptions.

The dichotomy between what is considered art "vs" decorative/craft work within the Western European canon of art history. One thing that should be interrogated is the physical labor of the unnamed people who make art spaces public to begin with. That is, the painters, the installation folks, the people monitoring the space. Outside of that, art and beauty are ubiquitous in communities of color in ALL aspects of our life, not just in gallery walls. We create art when we make our food, when we dress for the day, when we style our hair, we we put on jewelery. As far as I am concerned, the working class Senegalese womxn* dressed up in their attire in Chateau Rouge have more to tell me about fashion and art then some bland all Black attire European. The attention of creating beauty in all aspects of life is how we should think about art (re)production.

Art museums should center the works of people of color and the global south on their own right, not merely be segreating them into institutes that bear their area/ethnic identity. The process of seeking out, absorbing, and promoting these works are an indication that I have to do some learning and unlearning to reorient the canons of art and knowledge. I hope these paintings can be a guide for others as well.

We need to decolonize the canon(s) and stop art museums from being too white.

Learning about Candomblé

The African diaspora is so saturated with beauty, knowledge and strength and we have so many stories to tell. While in Paris, I learned about Candomblé an Afro-Brazilian religious tradition that was developed by enslaved Africans who originated from West African and were forced to migrate to settler colonial South America. The slaves and their descendants carry the traditions of Yoruba, Fon and other beliefs to honor Oludumaré and the many Orishas among us. She taught us that the practice is abot love, negotiation, collective power, and acceptance. I learned so much but was also struck by the positivity and love that was received by this practice which can be contrasted with the massive stigmatization of Voodoo in Haiti and by non-Haitians.

When a Gabonese friend and I discussed we could not help to think that it boiled down to one thing—Haiti has and will continue to be punished for what they do. As a Haitian person, I find that our African derived practices are not generally celebrated nor are they understood by outsiders. People rarely bother to learn Kreyol and often see Haiti (in the contemporary context) as a site of disease and poverty. But that is plain old wrong. I have been digging deep in my family’s history to challenge the lies I have been told and to unravel them so that I can see the beauty of my African descended cousins who speak Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, etc, as well. Our traditions can be celebrated and taken up as an act of resistance not a subject of shame.