Almost 150 artists, curators, and different cultural figures signed an open letter denouncing the Centre Pompidou-Metz’s determination to abruptly name off an exhibition centering on modern Franco-Creole, Caribbean French, and Guyanese artwork. The cancellation, which was formalized in a June 10 discover, adopted months of planning and a collection of tense textual content message exchanges between the museum’s director Chiara Parisi and visitor curator Claire Tancons, Le Monde reported.
Slated to run from the tip of October 2026 via the start of April 2027, the survey Van Lévé: Sovereign Visions from the Maroon and Creole Americas and Amazonia would have gathered the works of dozens of artists from throughout the French Caribbean area, together with Julien Creuzet, who represented France eventually yr’s Venice Biennale; Gaëlle Choisne, who gained final yr’s Prix Marcel Duchamp; and the late Haitian-born painter Hervé Télémaque, Libération reported.
In late Might, Tancons raised considerations to Parisi about an overlap between the runtime of Van Lévé and Maurizio Cattelan’s ongoing Limitless Sunday exhibition, which is scheduled to run via February 2, 2027. The latter shows the artist’s 36-foot marble middle-finger sculpture “L.O.V.E.” (2010) in one of many identical galleries the place the group survey of Caribbean artwork could be partially held. Parisi informed Tancons that the 2 exhibits must coexist in the identical house.
“You have a large gallery. If you feel that your project can only exist on the condition of the Forum, then perhaps we should rediscuss the dates. And if you think that what we are proposing does not respect your vision, we would be very sad if you decided not to continue this wonderful adventure,” Parisi wrote to Tancons, who replied: “I don’t know how to work without respect for keeping one’s word, without respect for contractual terms.”
Centre Pompidou-Metz (picture by way of Getty Photos)
Within the wake of the exhibition’s termination, Tancons despatched a letter to the French Ministry of Tradition sharply rebuking the seeming hypocrisy of the museum’s determination.
“This brutal and shocking cancellation, which comes at a time when Paris Noir is triumphing in Paris at the Centre Pompidou, calls into question the double discourse regarding the artistic productions of Afro-descendant and Caribbean artists and the difficulty curators from their territories have in promoting their stories,” the curator wrote in a June 10 letter to the company, in keeping with Le Monde. The letter referenced the not too long ago concluded survey Paris Noir on the Centre Pompidou, which revisited the works of 150 African diasporic artists working throughout the Trendy and Publish-Trendy cultural panorama.
“The cancellation announced by the Centre Pompidou-Metz, and presented as being for budgetary reasons, is a tell-tale sign,” reads the open letter decrying the rescission. Its signatories embrace artists who have been slated to take part within the survey, like Tabita Rézaire, Jimmy Robert, Minia Biabiany and Raphaël Barontini.
“A female Guadeloupean exhibition curator will always be overly ambitious, even if her international reputation is well established and she fundraised to cover nearly half of the budget for her exhibition,” the letter continued, alluding to a $500,000 (€430,000) grant from the Ford Basis for the present.
Hyperallergic has contacted Tancons, the Centre Pompidou-Metz, and the Ford Basis for remark.
Nonetheless from Minia Biabiany’s “toli toli” (2018), 10 min, video (courtesy the artist)
The Centre Pompidou-Metz didn’t instantly contact any of the artists in regards to the exhibition’s cancellation, Bianiany stated.
She thinks an alternate venue in France could be “ideal” when it comes to decolonizing current French historical past.
“It can mark a turn,” Biabiany stated. “This being said, our voices exist with and without the French cultural world for sure.”
