Valérie John

1964 | Fort-de-France, Martinique, France

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Valérie John — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

√ Accumulation √ Graphic arts √ Assemblage √ Drawing √ Installation √ Monumental √ Textile √ Weaving √ Colour √ Memory √ Postcolonialism √ Europe √ France

Marinican-French visual artist, curator and researcher in visual arts and art sciences.

At 17 Valérie John left Martinique to study at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. While writing her dissertation on pagnes, and studying scenography, visual art and semiotics, she was – in a gesture that proved decisive – given a pagne. In 1983 she travelled to Senegal and went on to visit Gambia, Mali and Mauritania; during this time she became particularly interested in the bogolan pagne, the work of Sarakolé (Soninke) dyers and the production of indigo dye. In Senegal she met several artists participating in the Dakar-based Laboratoire Agit’Art, founded in 1973. After several years in Africa, she returned to Martinique where she continued her artistic practice and began working as a teacher. In 1998 she began her own practice, synthesising her research on the pagne: she dated all subsequent creations from that year.

On returning to the island, V. John established her “cross-cultural weaving loom”, a title borrowed from the Haitian poet René Depestre. Her work is steeped in the memory of place. In Martinique she returned to the colour indigo, a memory of a dream of Africa. Weaving made her a “marker of voices” and became way of assembling and tying together the stories and gestures dispersed by the repeated shipment and displacement of West Indian memories and bodies. The weaver assembles, writes, heals, edits and spares from oblivion the fluid material of a perpetually recomposing memory.

Time as actor also plays an important role in V. John’s work: her installations, such as Et si les griots… [And if the griots…, 1998-2021], suspended or recumbent, evolve over time; the gold she applies to her “palimpsest bodies” gradually brings out the complexities of the indigo black, a symbol of what has, in changing, resisted the experience of the hold.

V. John was director of the Visual Arts Department of the Campus Caraïbéen des Arts, in Fort-de-France, for four years. Since then she has taught at the Lycée Victor-Anicet. At the 2022 Dakar Biennale the B-Home Gallery presented a solo exhibition of her work, and her work has also been shown at the Fondation Clément in Martinique, at the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris and at the UFC Art Gallery in Orlando.

Chris Cyrille

Translated from From the French by Flora Hibberd.

Valérie John, Texte(s)-île(s), 1998-2023, mixed medias, weaving of loincloths, fabrics, carpets, papers, pigment (indigo) and illumination (glod), front/back, variables dimensions © Valérie John

Valérie John, Un nuage de voix fait ton bruit d’ouvrage…, 1998-2023, installation from January 12, 2012 – August 17, 2021, , mixed medias, textile, carpet “weaving the world” and video, variable dimensions © Valérie John

Valérie John, Reviens-tu des forêts noires de la mer… secret(s), 1998 – 2023, mixed medias, woven papers, pigments and illumination (gold), variables dimensions © Valérie John

Valérie John, Palimpseste ancestralité, 1998-2023, mixed medias, variables dimensions © Valérie John

Valérie John, Ne regarde pas sans voir, 1998-2023, mixed medias, woven papers, pigments, stainless pliers, carved wooden figures and illumination (gold), front/back, 550 x 260 cm © Valérie John

Valérie John, Indigo le cabinet des curiosité(s), 1998-2023, protean installation, mixed medias, woven papers, indigo-stained wall, carved wooden figurines, illumination (gold), aluminum hooks © Valérie John

Valérie John, I telman nwè ki i blé [It is so dark that it is blue], 1998-2023, installation, mixed technique, woven papers, pigments and illumination (gold) and aluminum hook, 600 x 300 x 30 cm © Valérie John

Valérie John, I telman nwè ki i blé [It is so dark that it is blue], 1998-2023, first version,mixed technique, variables dimensions © Valérie John

Valérie John, Fabrique à mémoires, 1998-2023, mixed technique, woven papers, pigments and illumination (gold), variables dimensions © Valérie John

Valérie John, Être(s) de traces marqueur d’histoire(s)…, 1998-2023, installation, detail, mixed media, textiles, indigo dye, indigo-stained wall, carved wooden figurines, trinkets, wrought iron benches, calabash, engraved floor © Valérie John

Valérie John, Être(s) de traces marqueur d’histoire(s)…, 1998-2023, installation-performance, mixed technique, textiles © Valérie John

Valérie John, Et si les griots, 1998 – 2023, mixed technique, woven papers, pigments and illumination (gold), carpet, wooden figurines, installation variable dimensions © Valérie John