Artists

Valérie John

Press release

Valérie John proposes to explore indigo blue as a material, a memory and a gesture. From Martinique to West Africa, her œuvre brings together identities and stories in assemblages that constitute sensory traces of the past. Entitled "I telman nwè ki i blé (So Black It Turns Blue)", this solo exhibition presents a selection of Valérie John's work dating back to the 1990s and her return to Martinique, where she set up a "workshop-work-of-art". This choice was a commitment to pursuing her œuvre through an immersion in her milieu, one rooted in the island's translocal memory and in a shifting gesture of identity construction. At the Palais de Tokyo, through paper and textile assemblages, installations, clothing, objects and books, she proposes an immersion in indigo and its metamorphoses: an aesthetic and sensory experience that extends from the deepest blues to the brightest blacks. Curator: Amandine Nana, assisted by Candice Ratsimba