Van Lévé: Sovereign Visions from the Creole and Maroon Caribbean and Amazonia: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, and Haiti
Van Lévé: Sovereign Visions from the Creole and Maroon Caribbean and Amazonia: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, and Haiti
Above: Detail of Ronald Cyrille, L’Accomade from the series L'Antre deux, Acrylic on canvas, 208cm x 198cm
Cedrine Scheidig, "Les Mornes, Le Feu" / "Saltwater and Other Ghosts" (English title), 2022-2024. Framed C-print, 45 x 55 cm.
Tessa Mars, "A Vision of Peace, Harmony and Good Intelligence," 2020. Acrylic paint on canvas, 190 x 190 cm. Collection: Sabine Vazieux
David Gumbs, "Sonjé," 2024. VR installation with wallpaper and/or video + 2 VR headsets. Runtime: 5:00 min.
On view September 22, 2026 – June 5, 2027
Van Lévé: Sovereign Visions from the Creole and Maroon Caribbean and Amazonia: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, and Haiti is an intergenerational and transhistorical exhibition organized from a uniquely Caribbean perspective. Van Lévé brings together internationally acclaimed artists with connections to territories in the Americas formerly under French colonial rule, placing them in dialogue with landmark historical works. It provides a historical grounding and artistic genealogy that amplifies a renaissance of Creole, Maroon, Caribbean, and Amazonian voices. As France continues to reckon with its involvement in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and colonial slavery on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Taubira Law recognizing both as crimes against humanity, Van Lévé asks: how do artists, connected by their fraught past and present connections with France, deploy critical inquiry and aesthetic elaboration to forge emancipatory dreams that can be transformed into tangible sovereign visions?
Van Lévé is curated by Claire Tancons, founder and director of EXTEMPORA, at the invitation of Professor Cécile Fromont for the Alain Locke Gallery under the auspices of Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.
Participating artists include: Mathieu Abonnenc, Franky Amété, Raphaël Barontini, Minia Biabiany, Ernest Breleur, Jean-Marc Bullet, Ronald Cyrille, Gaëlle Choisne, Kenny Dunkan, Gwladys Gambie, David Gumbs, Fabiola Jean-Louis, Clémence Lollia Hilaire, Louisa Marajo, Manuel Mathieu, Tessa Mars, Jimmy Robert, Cédrine Scheidig, and Hervé Télémaque.
About the Curator
Claire Tancons is a curator and scholar invested in discursive and curatorial investigations of the postcolonial. As a curator of processional performance and a scholar of carnival, she has traced a distinct genealogy of contemporary performance practices of the Caribbean that harks back to the region’s street festival and carnival traditions, most notably in the exhibition and book ‘En Mas’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean (with Krista Thompson). Tancons has participated in the practice and discourse of globalization from a Caribbean historical consciousness through her contributions to international contemporary art biennials over a decade-long span - most recently, Sharjah Biennial 14- as well as to institutions such as Tate Modern and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. A graduate in art history and museum studies from the École du Louvre and The Courtauld Institute of Art and a former fellow of the Curatorial Studies program of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, Tancons is the recipient of grants and awards, including from the Warhol, Creative Capital, and Emily Hall Tremaine Foundations. Born in Guadeloupe, Tancons is currently based in Paris where she is the founding director of EXTEMPORA, a platform dedicated to diasporic histories, cultures, and ecologies. In 2024, she was also the Artistic Director of Polygonal/e: Nuit Blanche.
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