Awakening the dead, healing the nation

by Cheryl Finley

 

 

Raphaël Barontini leads a cadre of contemporary artists of the African diaspora who participate in what I have called a practice of mnemonic aesthetics, wherein they deploy key images, portraits, objects and iconographies of past historical narratives depicting resistance to enslavement and colonialism as a call to action for contemporary audiences to engage in ongoing struggles to be free, to effect sustainable structural change, to combat racism, xenophobia and disenfranchisement, to imagine vibrant possibilities, and bright, new futures. Among these, the image of the slave ship, portraits of revolutionary leaders, including Toussaint L’Ouverture (c. 1743-1803) or John Brown (1800-1859), and abolitionists such as Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745-1797), Nanny of the Maroons (c. 1685-1755) or Frederick Douglass (c. 1817-1895), remain standards of the arsenal and stand out in the works of these artist-activists. Barontini pays homage to some of these seminal figures and introduces imagined ones in the monumental We Could Be Heroes commissioned by the Center of National Monuments at the Panthéon in Paris, October 19, 2023 – February 11, 2024. 

Activating images, objects and artifacts imbued with Afro-Caribbean history and lived experience, Barontini employs mnemonic aesthetics—a ritualized politics of remembering—and demonstrates how this key cultural practice of contemporary artists of the African and Caribbean diasporas mobilize strategies of repetition, rhythm and ritual to make hidden histories tangible and actionable, frequently employing print-based, photographic or time-based technologies. “These artists often work and rework, reimagine and reinterpret the material sources they use as a base.”

 

In Barontini’s case, he seizes archival sources, artifacts, and ephemera—prints, photographs, reproductions of paintings and ritual objects—and through his multi-media practice, reinterprets, positions, cuts, reinserts and reclaims them to elevate and expose the untold and hidden histories of the Caribbean diaspora in France. Barontini’s subversions of the archive act as interventions, shedding light—literally—on artifacts sequestered and confined to the archive or reinterpreting anew centuries-old history paintings and prints to propose alternatives to the colonial narrative, updating it with the stories, figures and cultural tools of Black resistance, liberation, identity, beauty and power. The practice of mnemonic aesthetics is a decolonial methodology in which artists like Barontini and others find new meaning in archival images and objects to help correct, amend and reimagine the historical record.

 

The Crossing is one of the two largest textile panoramas of We Could Be Heroes, spanning the width of the North Transept of the Panthéon, where natural light from the windows above lend a radiance and levity to the silkscreened and pieced fabrics, allowing them to glow and flow with the air currents. Featured prominently in this work is the schematic image, Description of a Slave Ship (1789), made famous by the foundational work of Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846), the underrecognized British abolitionist instrumental in researching, theorizing, and activating the campaign for ending the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, and later chattel slavery as an institution in the British Colonies in 1833. He traveled to Paris on the eve of the French Revolution in 1789 with copies of the woodblock print, which exposed for the first time the manner in which enslaved Africans were violently and inhumanely packaged and transported across the Atlantic from West Africa to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. Clarkson met with members of the Société des Amis des Noirs and shared this print with statesmen Abbé Grégoire and the Comte de Mirabeau (both buried in the Panthéon), who commissioned a miniature frigate after the print with carved figures representing enslaved people. In Barontini’s hands, however, 235 years later, the famous print of the slave ship is cut, excerpted, and pieced together, forming the hulls of two separate sailing vessels, driving the brutal narrative of the Middle Passage across the moving panorama. Hands and limbs reach out from the ships’ hulls, while shackles hang down from the purple-hued night sky, full moon aglow. To the left on the shore is one of the oldest plantations in Guadeloupe, in Marie-Galante, and to the right, enlarged Fang masks stand watch over the sailing vessels, a reminder that religious, literary, cultural and musical practices traveled with the enslaved people to the abyss or onward to the new world. Named The Crossing, this panorama draws upon the seminal work of Martinican poet and theorist, Édouard Glissant (1928-2011), notably his poem, the “Open Boat,” from his critically acclaimed Poetics of Relation.

 

Above, closer to the windows, three additional textiles in the North Transept complement The Crossing, using a similar color palette of subdued blues, purples and steely grays: The Maroon, Léwoz and The Abyss. In The Maroon, Barontini depicts one of many courageous enslaved Africans who took to the mountains, dense foliage and untraveled routes to get away and self-emancipate. Resistant and determined, they developed their own societies, living apart from French planters while secretly interacting with enslaved people on plantations via social relations and the exchange of goods and services. Barontini’s textile work shows a figure on the move in the early light of dawn, high up in mountains shrouded by lush greenery and comforted by a periwinkle sky. With its flat representation of verdant rushes, the sun and the figure in profile, this luminous work recalls similar panels from Jacob Lawrence’s (1917-2000) Toussaint L’Ouverture Series (1938), where the artist used bold colors and angular, flattened perspectives to portray the life of the revolutionary leader of the Haitian Revolution. To the far right, Léwoz celebrates the musical and dance traditions developed on the plantations of Guadeloupe and Martinique, notably “Ka,” in which the percussive sound of the drum was originally derived from animal skin-covered wooden barrels once used to transport wine, salted fish or meats, oil or rum, as enslaved people were not allowed to cut down trees. At the center, The Abyss brings us back to the work of Édouard Glissant and a metaphorical interpretation of the Middle Passage using the free-falling Negro Study of the famous nineteenth-century artist-model, Joseph, who was painted by the French-Haitian child prodigy, Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856), in 1838. The artist, who was born in El Limón, Santo Domingo (now Dominican Republic), migrated to France with his family and studied with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres at the age of eleven, and later Eugène Delacroix, before exhibiting at the Paris Salon in 1836 at the age of seventeen. The model, Joseph, was also painted by Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), best known for the large-scale history painting, Raft of the Medusa, 1818-19, in which Joseph is seen at the pinnacle of the faltering raft, transporting survivors of the shipwrecked frigate Medusa, which had run aground in a storm. Géricault’s painting of this controversial subject, in which all but fifteen of the one hundred forty-seven on board survived, launched his career at the Paris Salon of 1819.

 

Depending on the time of day, the sunlight from the upper windows of the Panthéon adds a shimmer to the textile panoramas as if reflecting off the water. As the light changes throughout the day, so too do the colors and luminosity of the works. All of the panoramic textile works, like their counterparts in the South Transept, are suspended free-flowing. The work of African American abstract painter Sam Gilliam (1933-2022), known for his pioneering color-washed, draped canvases that embraced free form, serves as a key reference this series of works by Barontini. In the space of the Panthéon, his panoramic works loom large, crossing the expanse of the transepts, catching the air currents and light filtered through the windows.

 

Featured prominently in the suite of three panoramic textiles depicting the Battle of Vertières (1803) in the South Transept, Toussaint’s Triumph highlights the figure of Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743-1803), who long has compelled artists for his seminal role in global Black resistance movements, notably in leading the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), resulting in the first independent Black nation in Latin America. For example, renowned African American artist, Jacob Lawrence, pioneered his signature historical narrative style of “dynamic cubism,” painting flat figures with bold colors, as early as 1938 at the age of twenty-one with the Toussaint L’Ouverture Series of forty-one gouache paintings, which Harlem Renaissance philosopher, Alain Locke (1885-1954), called “one of the most important” and “symbolic” works of the time. For that series, the young Lawrence conducted detailed research at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) to craft captions and images that chronicled specific moments in the years-long struggle, and studied with Harlem Renaissance artists Augusta Savage (1892-1962), Charles Alston (1907-1977) and Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012).

 

A mainstay of Barontini’s iconography, the figure of L’Ouverture has appeared in earlier works, including silkscreened and digitally printed fabric capes, chaps, scarves and flags performed and exhibited in Caribbean Fantasia at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts in Texas in 2020. The monumental Caribbean Fantasia Panorama demonstrates Barontini’s clever bricolage of historical and contemporary elements, mixed media and colorful flair pushing back against the constraints of Art History and the conventional techniques of framing and stretching to reveal the vibrant, curved textile work suspended from the ceiling and tethered to the floor. In it, three revolutionary figures appear on horseback wearing military regalia, including the black and white reproduction of an oil painting once believed to be the Black British abolitionist, Olaudah Equiano, a collaged Ife head and a contemporary mashup of L’Ouverture. Barontini’s handy splicing and rearranging of these figurative pieces suggest new narratives, while introducing a sense of movement and three-dimensionality. Precursors to the commanding banners and textile works of We Could Be Heroes, Caribbean Fantasia set out to define Barontini’s arsenal of images, objects and activations: ornamental trimmings consisting of gold rope, fringe, flags and epaulets referencing the pageantry of military service are sewn together with silkscreened images of real and invented revolutionary leaders on horseback or wielding machetes. Elements of abstraction place the figures within a moody landscape, a sky awash in jewel colors, emanating triumph and the fervor of victory. The Battle of Vertières, the expansive suspended textile work anchoring the South Transept, employs some of the same strategies pioneered in Caribbean Fantasia Panorama, including the clever positioning of archival images and iconographies of Barontini’s making as well as the cutting and pasting of historical references, such as military equine statuary, or the powerful imposition of outsized, portraiture. However, in this work as in The Crossing, showing opposite in the North Transept, the artist is keen to push back against the tradition of French history painting, notably the series of battle scenes that memorialized the exploits of Napoleon (1769-1821) in the nineteenth century, such as The Battle of Austerlitz, December 2, 1805 painted by François Gérard (1770-1837) in 1810, which depicts the French defeat of the Russian and Austrian armies led by Napoleon. That monumental canvas dramatizes the moment with General Rapp (1871-1821) presenting Napoleon (at his right surrounded by generals) with the defeated Russian Prince, Nikolai Repnin-Volkonsky (1778-1845). The pageantry of the key figures as well as the supporting roles, with victorious soldiers flanking in the background versus the dead and dying bodies dispersed about the foreground, follows a stated code of battle scene representation that would permeate the genre for the next quarter-century with more than thirty monumental-sized battle scene paintings displayed in the Galerie des Batailles at the Palace of Versailles by 1837.

 

In contrast, Barontini’s Battle of Vertières celebrates the pivotal victory of General Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758-1806), who led the Haitian army after L’Ouverture’s death, over France’s General Rochambeau (1755-1813) on November 18, 1803, paving the way to the independent nation of Haiti in 1804. With Barontini’s now-established iconography, the historical panorama is set in the Caribbean, signaled by the bright color palette as well as the presence of tropical palm trees placed on either side framing the battle scene, the vibrant cannon fire, the figure on horseback and the ultimate demonstration of victory by the Haitian army. As if narrating the story, an oversized bust of a general at left stares confidently at the viewer, followed by a soldier on horseback with an equally assured look in his eye. At the center, victory is symbolized by an enlarged image of a ritual figure from Benin formerly in the collection of the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac and the bold victory flag above.

The first showing of The Battle of Vertières since its debut in We Could Be Heroes was at the Currier Museum of Art in New Hampshire in winter-spring 2024. Concurrently on view at the Currier Museum was a presentation of Kara Walker’s (1969) critically acclaimed Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), a portfolio of fifteen prints in which the artist enlarged and reproduced prints from the popular nineteenth-century Civil War account Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Chicago, 1862), and overlaid silkscreened silhouette figures in solid black, reminiscent of her well-known practice. In her seminal work from the 1990s, Walker took the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century representational silhouette portrait miniature and enlarged it to life-size, creating panoramic murals of cut-out, black figures set against stark, white walls. By enlarging the silhouette figures to life-size and introducing a narrative function, Walker revolutionized the 200-year-old portrait medium and innovated the nascent 1990s-era practice of installation with life-sized panoramic murals. Viewers could relate to these works at a bodily scale through their 1:1 relationship to the figures in the murals, further enriching the storytelling capabilities of these works. Similarly, Barontini’s banners and panoramas have a kinesthetic relationship to the viewer at the level of scale, enhanced by their accessible tactile qualities as well as their subversive narrative function. The translation between scale offers a new way of seeing and experiencing these works, where you can relate your human self to them and become part of the narrative. Barontini’s practice of cutting up a painting, print, photograph or sculpture and re-piecing it together, retelling the story with the figures he inserts, activates them with vitality and movement while offering alternative narratives inclusive of Caribbean histories. Updating and rewriting histories is something that both Barontini and Walker do well with their use of novel techniques and historical archives.

 

Photography and the Art of Mechanical Reproduction

Photography plays an important role in the work of Raphaël Barontini as it does in the history of art, the evolution of Enlightenment-era vision, the documentation of the colonial project and the accumulation of archives. While formally introduced to the world commercially in 1839 by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) in France and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) in England, the photograph was a product of the Enlightenment and the technology pioneered to make it resulted in new ways of seeing that affected not only human interaction but also the history of art, notions of truth and the ability to document the colonial era with images of conquest of foreign lands and peoples as well as images of cultural artifacts, architecture, flora and fauna. The resulting collections of objects and their documentation, and archives to hold them, have become the rich fodder of Barontini’s innovative practice, making these seemingly historical images feel presciently contemporary through cutting, splicing, and suturing as well as with proportion, placement, repetition and alignment. This practice has an impact on the viewer, of course, but it also purposely brings to the fore the violence of slavery and colonialism through the cut and reattachment, the movement and realignment, the free license with scale, saturation, coloration and repetition. With access to the archives of the Louvre, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Amistad Research Center and more, Barontini has conjured his own visual language out of amended historical and archival images as a form of repair.

 

Collage-Bricolage 

Collage and bricolage disrupt the linearity of historical narratives and open new spaces, playing fields of understanding for unheard voices, stories of the underrepresented and ignored to be seen, heard, rewritten, and told anew. Harnessing and imbuing images of the past with future possibility, Barontini creates novel forms of storytelling where portraiture, iconography, performance and the Black body land in the gaps, suture, heal and release, challenging how, who and what we remember in the most coveted and defining of national memorials in France, the Panthéon. Amplifying and updating the power of bricolage, the textile works, banners, sonic landscape and performance of We Could Be Heroes are put in service to honor the unacknowledged freedom fighters, maroons, and revolutionary leaders of the Caribbean (Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Haiti), who fought vigorously for freedom and self-determination, eschewing centuries-old master narratives to acknowledge and propose new possibilities. Culling, splicing and reinserting images from the archives and collections of French national museums, Barontini transforms the celebrated form of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century history painting for a twenty-first-century audience, creating massive, panoramic historical textile works that span the North and South Transepts of the Panthéon, positioned to capture the changing light of the fall and winter skies, adding layers to the atmospheric mood of the overall work. Inspired, in part, by his training at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris and his studio across the street from the Louvre, Barontini rightfully has questioned the historical narratives of France’s most illustrious museum and the stories that have been forgotten, elided, untold. A shrewd observer of history and art, Barontini has studied the paintings at the Louvre, the Palace of Versailles and other national and global museums, deciphering their iconographies and codes, taking account of the missing narratives. In addition to history painting, the ritual objects stolen from African societies during colonization also form part of his visual language.

 

Residencies and Commissions

Since the Renaissance, with the establishment of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, Italy, artist residencies have played a pivotal role in the history of art and inspired artistic innovation. In addition to providing studio space and access to skills-building and training, they have long been an important part of artist development and education, fostering exposure to new materials, techniques and cultures, while expanding networks between artists and patrons alike. For Barontini, artist residencies have enabled him to experiment, learn and grow for more than a decade. In 2013, he was selected for the Périféériques (Chantiers du Sud) residency in Jacmel, Haiti, where he lived in a Vodou temple for one month and received lessons every morning, learning Vodou ceremonial rituals that later influenced his own use of performance as a transformational element of his multidisciplinary artistic practice. According to the artist, the residency in Haiti “helped me to understand the history of the Caribbean,” while emphasizing the distinct histories of Francophone Caribbean and Indian Ocean islands—the people, landscapes and resources—and how they were emboldened by the resistance to slavery and colonization through self-emancipatory practices such as marronage and creolized religions like Vodou.

Like artist residencies, public commissions also have a way of challenging artists’ methodologies and reshaping their practices. As site-specific engagements, public commissions call upon artists to consider locale, including history, community and materials. In 2019, Barontini was awarded a public commission by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Georgia that resulted in his first solo exhibition and performance in the US, the Golden March, which explored the life of legendary abolitionist and activist Frederick Douglass. This commission proved decisive in the artist’s career with its bold application of the archives and performance to challenge and subvert traditional modes of representation. It reaffirmed his novel use of layered silkscreens sourced from historic paintings, prints and photographs found in the archives of Black resistance to slavery to tell the story of Douglass’ escape from slavery to freedom in the North in 1838. Printed on hand-dyed textiles, with the addition of ceremonial elements, including fringe, banners and satin, these works were activated in a parade orchestrated by Barontini when he enlisted the talents of a local high school marching band. His commission at SCAD, together with his earlier residency in Haiti, revealed connections between the American South and the islands of the Francophone Caribbean through the narratives of indigenous and African-descended peoples’ resistance to slavery and colonialism. Together, these distinct yet interconnected diasporic histories, cultures and practices prepared Barontini for the Panthéon commission.

 

Textiles and Collaborating with the Next Generation

Textiles are foundational to Barontini’s practice, and their versatility has equipped him with innovative ways to think beyond traditional canvas stretchers, off the wall, as well as through installation and performance. The materiality of the fabric banners enabled visitors to be more in touch with the artwork. According to the artist, “What I wanted with my fabric and textile installation was for people to be involved in the topic and subject of the installation due to the size and materiality.” The photographic nature of the imagery and iconography also lends a certain familiarity to contemporary audiences while the banners, positioned at the entrance to the Panthéon, take a stand, subvert what is around them and confront the viewer upon entry. 

Partnering with local Carnival bands wherever he exhibits lends greater access to Barontini’s work, conveying his messages and teachings more freely through the visitor’s relationship to performance and the kinesthetic experience of installation. Consciously working with communities in Saint-Denis or in communities nearby where he is exhibiting, Barontini has worked closely with local art schools, textile students, dancers and Caribbean Carnival troupes. His interest in the practices of Carnival and subversion gave sharper focus to his practice of splicing historic prints, photographs of African ancestral figures and equestrian figures, of layering, transposing and piecing these together, bringing eighteenth and nineteenth-century images into focus for present-day audiences. 

Noting the ceremonial purpose of the Panthéon, Barontini treated the commission as an opportunity to pay homage to the hitherto unacknowledged African-descended freedom fighters, leaders and supporters who conspired to defeat slavery and colonialism in the overseas territories. Lining the entrance to the Panthéon, he strategically placed a phalanx of ten textile banners in formation, five on each side, with life-sized collaged portraits of revolutionary leaders on canvas. The banners are screenprinted on canvas all in the same dimension, with great attention to detailed handwork. One cannot visually see a collage with different materials like the large panoramic pieces in the North and South transepts, which are pieced-together collages. Instead, the banners are pictorial works with a flat appearance, which Barontini intended to be activated in the performance. When the banners were completed, he cut, shaped and added the fringe and ceremonial elements to the front and dyed the cotton lining, which he applied to the other side. 

The banners’ illusory portrait images are sourced from the archives of the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the repositories of national museums, including classical statuary from the Louvre, to create figures with monumental sensibilities, aligning with the monumentality of the Panthéon itself. Cut, layered and combined with reference images from national memorials, including the symbolic, victorious equestrian statues often associated with military pursuits, Napoleon or his generals (who are buried in the crypt and which Barontini reclaims for his own incisive use) or emboldened examples of classical African sculpture, these imaginary portraits represent ten distinct historical figures, based on the biographical attributes of each character and their corresponding landscapes, creating a cartography of figures from the different Francophone Caribbean and Indian Ocean islands. For example, Reunion Island is represented by a couple. Solitude and Toussaint L’Ouverture are figured in the large-scale textiles in the South Transept. In the end, Barontini’s pictorial banners honor figures of resistance and push back against canonical ways to represent them. As key elements of the ceremonial performance directed by Barontini, the pictorial banners were activated by the Mas Choukaj collective, wielding the percussive historical might of Guadeloupean mas Carnival in honoring the dead. Time-based, interactive components of gesture and choreography demonstrated the power of memory secreted in the bodies of the performers, awakening the dead, liberating the spirits of revolution. Ushering the potential of their long-awaited dreams, wishes and desires, on cue from Barontini, they march through the gates of the Panthéon to release them anew. 

Barontini worked closely with students of the École supérieure des arts appliqués Duperré in Paris to create the costumes worn by the Mas Choukaj collective, Caribbean Carnival musicians based in Seine-Saint-Denis, who marked the opening and closing of We Could Be Heroes with unforgettable, percussive performances worthy of awakening the dead. The banners and flags installed as a ceremonial arrangement just beyond the entrance to the monument form the artist’s own Panthéon of historical and imaginary figures in the fight to end slavery. These include men and women known to have shaped the outcome of the Haitian Revolution, such as Sanite Bélair, Dutty Boukman, Jean-Baptiste Belley and Cécile Fatiman as well as prominent revolutionaries in Guadeloupe and Martinique as well as other overseas territories and maroons, who helped lead the way to freedom. Their figurative representations appear on flags and banners as composite and often imagined images, where no record was found, using pictures from prints, photographs and sculpture, while ornate gold rope, reflective fabrics and dye-transfer create complex images representative of key historical figures. Mounted on poles, these banners and flags were danced as part of the Carnival procession that ultimately led the spirits out an open door in the direction of the setting sun.

Raphaël Barontini’s Panthéon commission was a monumental undertaking, indeed, charged with addressing the centuries-long absence of national heroes of African and Afro-Caribbean descent in the Panthéon. In the hands of Barontini, how is French national history and memory being challenged anew? By telling a story from the perspective of the indigenous and formerly enslaved, previously overlooked in historical narratives of the victors and figures buried in the Panthéon, Barontini’s historic intervention leads the way to consider new methods of memorializing overlooked and unacknowledged historical figures, including everyday women and men, while also proposing actions to provide remedy and inspiration for communities in the present. With this new canon of historical figures offered and envisioned by Barontini, artists, intellectuals, activists, statespeople and students can participate in a national healing of enduring promise.◆

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Text commissionned for the Book "We could be heroes", published by JBE,

with the support of Mariane Ibrahim.

(2024)