PARIS – French street artist Shuck One is honoring Black figures who shaped France’s recent history on the mainland and overseas, in an art installation being produced for an exhibition starting next month at the Pompidou Center in Paris.
Shuck One is a Black graffiti and visual artist native of the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, which is a French overseas department. He is participating in the “Black Paris” exhibition, which retraces the presence and influence of Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000.
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The Pompidou Center, one of the world’s top modern art museums, said that it will celebrate 150 artists of African descent, from Africa to the Americas, whose works have often never been displayed in France before.
Shuck One is one of five artists chosen to provide contemporary insights.
“I wanted to invoke the memory of the Black figures who created the ‘Black Paris’ and who, in a way, were pioneers before us in artistic, intellectual and other fields,” Shuck One told The Associated Press. “It’s a way for me to honor them.”
Activist and artist
Describing himself as “an activist who became an artist,” Shuck One grew up in the 1970s in Guadeloupe. After he arrived in Paris in the 1980s, he was considered one of the pioneers of French street art and graffiti — inspired by figures of the Négritude movement that denounced colonialism, racism and Eurocentrism.
His installation, titled “Regeneration,” is four meters (13 feet) high and 10 meters (33 feet) long. It shows major moments of Black history through paintings and collages of maps of Paris, archives and photos.
The starting point of the installation is the “Tirailleurs Sénégalais,” a corps of colonial infantry in the French army that fought in both World Wars.
One highlight is the May 1967 riots in Guadeloupe that led to the massacre of possibly dozens of people — figures are still being questioned by historians. Another feature is the BUMIDOM, a French state agency that between 1963 and 1981 organized the migration of 170,000 people from French overseas departments to the mainland for economic purposes, now considered by historians a symbol of post-colonial domination and discrimination.
Portraits of Black figures
It also shows portraits of Black figures, including politicians, writers, civil rights activists and other pioneers.
They include U.S.-born entertainer and civil rights activist Joséphine Baker; Aimé Césaire, poet and founder of the Négritude movement; and American political activist Angela Davis.
But there are also less known names like writer and activist Paulette Nardal; Eugénie Eboué, the first Black woman elected to France's National Assembly and Gerty Archimède, the second to be elected shortly after; and Maryse Condé, a novelist from Guadeloupe.
“The overall message of the exhibition is … to revive these forgotten figures, but also a next-generation aspect, a way to pass their history on," Shuck One said as he carefully studied the elaborate collage of photos and archive documents on a big wall of the exhibition.
“It’s also a way of making people understand what’s activism is about — (it's) very well to talk about the community, but it’s also important to know its history," he said.
The exhibition, which runs from March 19-June 30, is one of the last at the Pompidou Center before it shuts down later this year for renovations, which are due to last five years.