Clémence Gbonon

For my one-month residency in Chicago through the Prix Sarr and Villa Albertine, I wish to conduct research on the radicality and creativity of African-American communities in Chicago. It seems to me that there is a connection between the potential inherent in painting and the strategies developed by Black-American communities to assert themselves in all their complexity, density, and multiplicity. I am interested in exploring the question of authentic introspection: How can one know oneself intimately, both in socially acceptable aspects and in strangeness and darkness? How can one know oneself in one’s political and racial identity, but also beyond it? How can one know oneself in relation to History and a traumatic heritage? How can one know oneself beyond racial assumptions and the limits of the neo-colonial order? And in this quest, how can one affirm what endures: the soul.

It seems that these questions—particularly the last—resonate within the artistic, cultural, and historical scene of Chicago. I want to explore not only the practices of painters and visual artists engaged with this subject, but also delve into music and activism, which are particularly prominent in Chicago. I am interested in understanding how creative practices there seem to carry a unique social role, serving as sources of enlightenment and radicality. Within this framework, I aim to identify parallel, underlying, and alternative practices that foster a counter-hegemonic understanding of the self.

This project will therefore be shaped by encounters and visits to emblematic sites of African-American creativity in Chicago, with the goal of infusing my painting, upon my return, with reflections on vitality, knowledge, and authenticity.

To maintain a strong connection with American culture, the Villa Albertine residency offers me the opportunity to discover a new city in the United States: Chicago. Its history and the longstanding establishment of Black communities since the Great Migration provide a rich cultural framework for my reflection. From local churches to community associations, from the musical culture of blues, jazz, and house music to the Black Arts movement, heir to the Black Renaissance, and even to Chicago literature, imbued with Marxist principles and a keen class consciousness… all of this heritage seems to me an especially fertile ground for my exploration.

I want to engage with this energy, both to reflect on the importance of self-expression in strategies for personal and collective liberation, and to consider parallels with the French context regarding the cultural and intellectual presence of Black populations. It seems important to me to highlight the limits of the French republican framework and universalism, which collapse in the face of the richness of multiculturalism and difference.

Finally, and most importantly, I wish to immerse myself in this environment to channel this energy into my painting. I am confident that the residency in Chicago will allow me to approach my own practice in a deeper, broader, and perhaps different way. Through this context, I will above all be able to approach my work with renewed vitality, continually investigating the self.