Raphaël Barontini: I live a journey of a thousands years. Installation views. Courtesy Currier Museum of Art. Photos by Morgan Karanasios.
The exhibition title paraphrases a passage from the poem Calendrier lagunaire, published in 1982 by the late Martinican author and politician Aimé Césaire, which reads: “I dwell in a thousand-year journey.”
This is a journey that Barontini feels he is living, alongside those whose life experiences result from uprooting and displacement, and whose identities have been forged by encounters with other cultures through processes of creolization. These processes were described by Martinique-born French philosopher Édouard Glissant as a complex entanglement of different cultures forced into cohabitation, as in the case of the Antilles and other countries in the Caribbean.
The exhibition comprises about twenty works and is Barontini’s largest presentation to date at a US institution. Closely following the commission entitled We Could be Heroes at the Panthéon in Paris – part of the Carte blanche series organized by France’s National Monuments Center – the exhibition at the Currier features La Bataille de Vertières (2023) as its centerpiece, a monumental 65-foot-wide painting that first premiered inside the Panthéon and will be on view in the US for the first time. The work is complemented by recent work from US private collections and several new pieces created specifically for the Currier Museum.
On view from March 7 through June 23, 2024.
March 14, 2024
