Difé and Nuit
Palais de Tokyo, Paris
19 October 2022 – 8 January 2023
Burnt wooden tree trunks stand amongst strands of fibre connecting the floor to the ceiling while fragments of black ceramic scatter the walls of a room in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In a nearby exhibition space, wooden beams hanging from the ceiling sway above tracks of dirt intersecting on the concrete floor. Titled Difé [Fire] and Nuit [Night] respectively, these two large scale installations by contemporary Guadeloupean artist Minia Biabiany (b. 1988) address the entangled narratives of Caribbean history and legacies of French colonialism in Guadeloupe through the use of natural elements from the island, including wood, fibre, water and soil. Guadeloupe was established as a French colony in 1635; the island remains under French control today. By 1644, France had imposed slavery in Guadeloupe, linking the Caribbean island to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Bananas, which had been introduced to Guadeloupe in the sixteenth century, were initially used as a food source for the enslaved population, but they later became an item of export in the twentieth century. Because of this, between 1972-1993 the French government approved the use of the pesticide chlordecone to attack insects that threatened the banana plantations and the fruit’s economic profitability. Over three hundred tonnes of chlordecone were sprayed on banana plantations in Guadeloupe and nearby Martinique. Seeping into the waterways and soil, the pesticide was taken up by plants and animals and ingested by humans, leading to heightened rates of prostate cancer as well as reproductive health effects and neonatal issues in the local population.[1] The French government had been aware of the harmful effects of chlordecone but nonetheless authorised its use. Individuals living in Guadeloupe are today still contending with the residual effects of this poisoning of their land and bodies.
It is into this political and environmental landscape that Biabiany created the installations Difé and Nuit. The burnt wooden trunks in Difé resemble withered banana trees, pointing to the widespread use of chlordecone and a history of imperialism that forcibly implanted itself on the island. Three ceramic containers filled with water contain bone white sculptures that evoke spinal vertebrae, reinforcing the fatal effects of chlordecone on waterways and animals. The mounds of dirt in Nuit resemble soil tilled for planting or burial, inextricably linking the forcible transformation of the landscape with the oppression of the Guadeloupean population by French imperialism. Biabiany intentionally uses materials that are grounded in the landscape of Guadeloupe in order to bring entangled histories to the surface. She explained how the wood in Difé and Nuit came from a tree in her back garden in Guadeloupe and holds ‘a political charge’ because it references both the chlordecone poisoning and her own connection to the land.[2] She states, ‘My work is ultimately rooted in my experience of that place and from that experience I take elements that I modify [and] shape differently’.[3]Through her use of natural materials from Guadeloupe, Biabiany imagines ways of narrating history that are rooted in relationality and the Caribbean.
Grounding her installations and pedagogy in Caribbean networks allows Biabiany to resist narratives previously imposed on the island. In 2016, in collaboration with two other visual artists, Biabiany initiated the project Semillero Caribe [Caribbean Seedbed] which gathered participants to engage with the works of Caribbean thinkers. Semillero Caribe understood how colonialism imposed hierarchical relations of power onto the islands and their inhabitants and gestured towards using the architecture and land of the Caribbean itself as methods of resisting such hierarchies. In Difé and Nuit, navigating around burned tree trunks, strands of fibre and the tracks of soil entails walking among layers of Guadeloupean history. The majority of visitors in Nuit followed the large path left bare in the middle of the dirt, avoiding disturbing the soil patterns on either side; a hushed and solemn silence covered the space. The use of materials from Guadeloupe, especially when displayed in a museum in France, inserted a topography centred in the Caribbean archipelago and pointed to the slow embedded violence of French colonialism while offering space for the island to tell its own history rather than the one imposed by French imperialism.
Through Difé and Nuit, Biabiany addresses the way in which histories have been constructed. In an interview with the world literature journal Asymptote in early 2023, Biabiany said of her installations, ‘I was thinking about how Caribbean history is built.’[4] She recognises that the French colonial gaze has been largely applied to the Caribbean and Guadeloupe, imposing silences on Guadeloupean political discourse. Her works, in contrast, create spaces in which natural elements actively speak for themselves. Difé, the Creole word for ‘fire’, draws on the power of volcanoes to actively shape historical narratives. La Soufrière, a volcano in Basse-Terre where Biabiany was born and raised, exploded in 1976 and caused large internal population displacement and subsequent economic and environmental impacts. Such volcanic activity, is in Biabiany’s own words, ‘a force, a being, an energy that is part of the history of the island’ and attests to ‘the voice of lava that shifts, extends and transforms: a tender fire that eats away at silence.’[5] In Difé, Biabiany inserted the symbol of the sabre, sculpted in black ceramic resembling hardened lava, to reference examples of Guadeloupean resistance against French imperialism that took place in the 1960s. Difé, and Biabiany’s practice generally, are grounded in the voice of natural elements. Just as volcanoes disrupt landscapes with their eruptions, so too do Biabiany’s installations interrupt the current of colonial histories.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Minia Biabiany for speaking with me about her practice and œuvre. Thank you also to my MA advisor, Professor Dorothy Price, who supported my dissertation on Biabiany’s work.
Citations
[1] Belpomme, D., P. Irigaray, M. Ossondo, D. Vacque and M. Martin. ‘Prostate cancer as an environmental disease: an ecological study in the French Caribbean islands, Martinique and Guadeloupe.’ International Journal of Oncology, 34, no.4 (2009): 1037-1044.; Multigner, Luc, Philippe Kadhel, Florence Rouget, Pascal Blanchet and Sylvaine Cordier. ‘Chlordecone exposure and adverse effects in French West Indies populations.’ Environ Sci Pollut Res Int, 23, no. 1 (2016): 3-8.; and Navas, Grettel and Malcom Ferdinand. ‘Chlordecone poisoning by the banana industry in the French West Indies, Martinique and Guadeloupe.’ Environmental Justice Atlas. (Last modified August 18, 2019, accessed 2 May 2022, https://ejatlas.org/conflict/antilles-poisoned-by-kepone-in-the-banana-industry-martinique-and-guadeloupe).
[2] Minia Biabiany in conversation with Chloé Glass (27 April 2023).
[3] Minia Biabiany in conversation with Chloé Glass (27 April 2023).
[4] Minia Biabiany. ‘Weaving Silences.’ Interview by Eva Heisler. Asymptote (4 May 2023, accessed March 24, 2023, https://www.asymptotejournal.com/visual/minia-biabiany-weaving-silences/)
[5] Minia Biabiany in conversation with Chloé Glass (27 April 2023); and Palais de Tokyo. ‘Difé.’ (accessed March 24, 2023. https://palaisdetokyo.com/en/exposition/dife/).