The film is in free access the 19th and 20th of December and the 16th and 17th of January HERE
Suki Valentine
15.12.2020-30.01.2021
SOUS
LE PLI
-
UNDER WRAPS
CATALOGUE of the exhibition
GET INVOLVED
IN UNDER WRAPS PROJECT
Hidden In Plain Sight: #SayHerName
BIO
Suki Valentine is an artist, activist, writer and poet . After receiving a BFA in Metalsmithing from Pratt Institute in New York, Suki received an MFA - Studio Art from Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, where ze was bestowed the MCAD Grad Fellowship Grant.
Most recently an Artist-In-Residence at L’AiR Arts Paris, Suki also had pieces in shows running concurrently at Vivid Space in San Diego and the galleries at New York Studio School in New York City last summer. At Mémoire de l'Avenir, she participated in three group exhibitions, including a duo show with the Israeli sculptor Avi Sperber in 2019.
Suki’s work has been exhibited across the United States in addition to France and Morocco. Born and Raised in New York City, Suki Valentine currently lives and works in Jersey City.
Open Secrets series - overview
Under Wraps series - overview
Use the cursor over the images to discover the secrets that the clothes contain.
DISCOVER THE WORKS
Gia Grillo is a poet living and working in the shadow of New York City. She has honed her voice over the years both participating and running workshops and open mics.
She has always focused on poetry as a cathartic and accessible art form. Poetry has always afforded her the ability to color outside of literary lines and that form in formlessness is still reflected in her work today. She has been published in Outlook Springs, Virga Magazine, and as part of the Red Wheelbarrow Poet’s anthology. Her first chapbook The Moon Poems was published by Ethel Zine in 2019.
Guy Girard is a director and photographer. He has been active in the French and international cultural landscape since the 1980s. He has worked as a technical assistant at the Office HLM, as a truck driver in Martinique, as a coral fisherman in the Mediterranean, as a bookseller in Paris, as a photographer, as a film editor and, finally, as a film director. He has made more than eighty films in various formats: portraits of artists; historical documentaries; observational documentaries exploring French institutions; and experimental films.
The Moon Poems of and read by Gia Grillo
The French word "pli" can refer to the fold of a dress or a diplomatic package, the wave of hair or a fold in the skin, a crease or a bad habit.... Apparently nothing could be more anecdotal ! But beginning to observe them can turn into an obsession, because "plis" are everywhere.
ACCOMPAGNIED BY
sources
1 - Chinua Achebe
2 - voir source
3 - These copper postcards were once a popular tourist item to collect and mail
4 - Intersectionality is a concept used in sociology and political thinking, which refers to the situation of people simultaneously experiencing several forms of stratification, domination or discrimination in a society. Source here
5 - See the reference to the book Aie, mes aïeux ! by Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger
Mémoire de l'Avenir presents "Sous le Pli" / "Under Wraps", an exhibition by the American artist Suki Valentine, who in her latest project explores hidden personal and collective narratives, while questioning the impact of these hidden narrations on the construction of self and of social identities.
"Under Wraps" / "Sous le Pli" unfolds around two corpora of works and research by the artist, one linked to the silence of History and the other to the silence of individual stories or of families.
"As long as the lions do not have their own history, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter" Chinua Achebe 1
In the first body of work, the artist tackles the dominant history of the USA and grasps some recently surfaced narratives related to slavery, racism, institutionalized violence and the stories, for a long time silent, of the people that have been and are still oppressed for the country’s so-called social and economic progress. Her series Open Secrets of copper postcards echoes recent investigations on slavery, including the New York Times’ 1619 Project 2, and on systemic violence against women. The artist also takes an interest in "Indian residential schools" and the forced imprisonment of Native Americans, revealed notably by the Native American activist and author Thomas King in his book The Truth About Stories. These postcards, engraved using traditional hand-carving techniques, feature both text and images. Through this series, the artist contrasts the term “Americana”3 with counter-narratives that call for a new reading and re-writing of History.
In addition to this work, the artist presents Hidden In Plain Sight: #SayHerName, a series of fabric flowers created by the artist, each petal containing the names of non-reported names of African-American women murdered by the police. Through this work the artist points out on the intersectionality 4 of acts of violence and its invisibility.
If this work is mainly focused on American history, its echo is familiar in Europe and its history of colonization in particular and resonates beyond it as the history of domination is tied to the history of Mankind.
In the second part of the exhibition, entirely in textile, the artist is interested in personal stories and secrets. While secrecy is varied and can be constructive or protective, it can also be harmful or destructive. The field of psycho-genealogy5, in particular, has revealed this by showing possible relationships between physical and psychic states and family histories.
For Under Wraps, the artist has collected stories from persons close to her and anonymous sources for more than a year. In order to show the vulnerability of these intimate stories, the artist has embroidered them into handkerchiefs and sewn them inside vintage clothes (dresses, Victorian bloomers, tattered slippers, sheaths and other underwear). Each piece is made of multiple layers of fabric, voluntarily added by the artist to evoke a feeling of burial linked to the secret hidden under the folds. The visitor is invited to touch and explore the multiple layers of textile to discover the secrets. Get involved in Under Wraps project.
By choosing to mirror hidden personal and collective narratives, the artist invites us to broaden the perspective to apprehend the mutual influence of one on the other, which the recent #metoo or #blacklivesmatter movements have been able to reveal about individual and collective realities.
Suki Valentine
15.12.2020-30.01.2021
SOUS
LE PLI
-
UNDER WRAPS
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