Installation view - Credit Deniz Güzel
I am showcasing three artists of different age and backgrounds, working in distinct media within the diaspora. They are forming a dialogue with a seminal work by Alvaro Barrington which is part of my personal collection. The subject of the artistic journey and interconnected histories is what unites Roland Dorcély, Alex Burke and Isis Dove-Edwin.
"Towards the sun" stands for a metaphor to discover a better world through the production of cultural goods of any kind.
Roland Dorcély (1930-2017) was born in Haiti and was a pioneer of Caribbean modernity. By the late 50s, he was pursuing a dual career as a painter and poet in Europe and the US and his works were featured in a number of Museums as well as included in some major American collections. Stylistically, he was probably most influenced by the work of Fernand Leger with whom he was very close at the time.
Despite his early success, he eventually stopped working completely due to continuously experiencing discrimination as a Black foreigner, and has therefore remained in the shadows of art history until recently. In 2020 the American gallery Blum and Co organised a group show featuring his work. This was the start of a newfound interest in Dorcély.
However, Paintings by Roland Dorcély remain quite rare. Most of the known works derive from the collection of the Charles August Girard family. A number of paintings were made while he was living in Paris, some of which are currently on show at the Centre Pompidou in Paris: "Paris Noir" showcases a major survey of artists of the French Diaspora for the past 50 years.
Alex Burke was born in Fort-de-France in 1940 and has studied at the Nancy School of Fine Arts. His work is deeply political and explores themes as colonialism, social injustice and cultural exploitation, all the while celebrating the richness and diversity of the Indigenous cultures of the Americas. Using reclaimed fabric imbued with stories, origins and diverse motifs, his dolls reflect the need to pay homage to the oral traditions and the poetry contained in them.
Since the 2000, Burke’s works have been exhibited a number of times in Biennales (Havanna and Taipei Biennale) as well as some major museum shows, notably in France (Palais Tokyo and the Louvre) New York (Brooklyn Museum) and Argentina (Museum of Latin American Art), to name a few. Burke’s work is currently featured in the "Paris Noir" exhibition at the Centre Pompidou.
Alvaro Barrington was born in Venezuela in 1983 to Grenadian and Haitian Parents. Primarily a painter, he also incorporates materials like burlap, textiles, postcards and clothing, exploring how materials themselves can function as visual tools while referencing their personal, political and commercial histories. Art history and the poetry contained in music, especially the hip hop music scene of New York, as well as reggae and soca which he grew up with, remain a large influence on his practice, which engages with the interconnected histories of cultural production.
Isis Dove-Edwin lives in London where she has worked as a doctor for many years. She holds a First Class BA in Ceramic Design at Central St Martins and an MA degree in Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art.
She is drawn to the infinite potential of clay to hold memory and express ideas through materiality, process, and form, which can be shared through gifting, exchanging and exhibition. This documentary power of vessels may extend well into the future, as kept or found archaeological objects.
Dove-Edvin explores the diasporic journey of ceramic objects and, motivated by the relative absence of such work within the mainstream canon, engages with the lineage of the 'traditional' domestic coiled terracotta pot from West Africa – vessels communally made by women that have been decontextualised and classified as ethnographic objects by colonial museums to highlight otherness. Challenging the idea of a fixed African tradition of craft, her practise draws on historical narratives and aims to disrupt and activate form and surface as a means of storytelling and embodied practice, which intentionally removes function and alters shape. Thin sheets of terracotta clay serve as a flat canvas where she continues to explore texture, layering and expressive mark making, while also introducing motif and collage. Each piece is unique, commanding its own space - on the edge of pot and figure, craft and art, glaze and paint, monument and decoration.