Human sexuality and all of its connective tissue has been the area were I have spent the most time, in my practice. At a young age, due to my schooling in French schools, and my parent’s collection of artists monographs I became captivated by the works of european romantic orientalists, men such as Eugene Delacroix and Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Of course I was attracted to the general eroticism of these works, but I was also fascinated and perplexed, by the frequent interplay of race, gender, power, violence, and the contrasting representation of beastly primal black and brown men in opposition to the treasured sexualized somewhat mystical white women.
These early experiences where foundational in my cultural education as they were so sharply contrasted with my lived experience in Haiti, and Africa where the majority of the people around me were black but the power structures were clearly defined by colonial european dominance.Later on contacts with Sade, Henry Miller, and other trashy victorian materials in both french and english, which constantly asked me to challenge the societally proscribed ideas of the natural/acceptable and civilized hetero- normative sexual moeurs, but all of this material had the same common threads where power and violence were highlighted with ideals of race, gender and the exoticisation of the other all of it centered around idolatry of the virginal white woman.
The importance of these early experiences, have consistently made their way into my practice, from my earliest serious works.
My early attempts at self representation in this context was a photo collage piece of my nude body into a swastika like layout. Later on I attempted to flip the script and represent myself again in both the erotic poses usually assigned
to white women as well as the showing the terror masks usually imposed on black men’s faces.
Neither of those projects were particularly successful, as they were quickly interpreted instead as identity pieces revealing my queer identity, something that I was not specifically attempting to do.
With the aid of oft-quoted investigators of sexual moeurs such as Bataille, Nin, and Foucault, my practice has constantly targeted this aspect of the human experience; initially working with my own sexual identity and representation, but quickly becoming interested in the more arcane interplay between sexuality and society itself. From this position, and with the rise of internet culture, I have worked on a variety of different short net art and media pieces around these issues. Tapping into the vast trove of material constantly created by the web, while still looking back on historical imagery and media on the ideas espoused by the orientalist.
The current phase of this work is a project called larger project titled “Evidence”.
Evidence is in effect another attempt for me to target ideas I found exciting but difficult to work with in the writings of George Bataille, as well as the reflections on Bataille’s oeuvre in Foucault’s “L’Histoire de la sexualité” –The history of sexuality.
In “Evidence: Blood” I have been producing a series of Photograph over a period of 4 years, that fluctuate between the terror of malignancy in images of death and the cosmetic beauty of corporal death.
The obfuscation of sexuality in all communication, media, daily life in general, and the persistent societal malignancy of those who persist in questioning this taboo’s status; which has consistently prevented deeper analysis of sex’s role in civilization’s ills, joys, triumphs and failures.
