Bintou Dembélé

Since my debut in hip hop in 1985, and throughout my professional career, I have been determined to defy orders and constraints through diversion and re-imagination. This is how marginal cultures assert themselves and reclaim space.

Today I feel the need to dedicate myself to research, combined with other aesthetics, other disciplines, and other spaces. It will seek to open up a field of possibilities for Maroon thinking, in search of creative freedom.

In 2010, I focused on colonialism and on the construction of the Western gaze through “human zoos”. This was the impetus for my show “Z.H.”, which premiered in 2014. Historically, these ‘exoticizing’ representations of cultural practices from the South are based on devaluation, denigration, and rejection, all of which exist in society in various forms to this very day. I also studied the work of Chicago-based choreographer, anthropologist, and activist Katherine Dunham. Together with Ruth Page, she was the first to explore the relationship between traditional island dances and their African origins in an African American ballet. At Villa Medicis in Rome, I started working on a book, another way of keeping a record. I also took part in “Black Baroque,” a project led by Noémie N’Diaye, who’s an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. That work was a vital re-reading of the history of theatrical and operatic performance.

This residency gave me an opportunity to pursue these projects, to take time to re-think my artistic approach, to record my experience of the terter (land), and to turn the page on these disruptive times, in order for chaos to give way to rebirth and renewal.

Chicago’s name is tied to seminal historical, social, and societal struggles. The city’s history is inextricably linked to multiculturalism that seems to be more visible in the US than in France, where it is constantly being called into question. In my mind, Chicago is also associated with political figures such as Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and iconic artists such as painter Kerry James Marshall. I want to immerse myself in the spirit of that city, to understand and compare its multicultural history to the one I know and live in every day in France.

For many years, I’ve been learning about the relationships between the Bushinenge (Maroons) and French Guiana’s Kãlina (indigenous people). How do the various communities interact with one another in Chicago? How do queer communities define themselves? What are the stories that are being told? How do these communities record their histories, celebrate, evolve, and reinvent themselves?

I learnt about groundbreaking initiatives, whether individual or collective, institutional or underground, that focus on the co-existence between artists, residents, and cultural institutions.

For the past two years, I have had a residency in Clichy-Montfermeil (where France’s urban unrest of 2005 began); my residency in the United States forms part of the Clichycago collaborative platform that is being co-produced by Ateliers Médicis and Villa Albertine in Chicago.