Jean-Ulrick Désert Commits to Truth

Is it possible to hold one’s tongue to protect oneself? Audre Lorde didn’t seem to think so. In a lecture given after her cancer diagnosis in 1978, she gallantly proclaimed: ‘I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silence had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.’ Turned into an LED message, the latter sentences of this declaration scroll across the SAVVY Contemporary building. The work, Silence Will Not Protect You (2019), is an appetizer for Jean-Ulrick Désert’s ‘Conspicuous Invisibility’, a survey of the Haitian-born artist’s work from 1997 to 2023. Like Lorde, Désert intuits that death is inevitable, but the curse of quiescence makes life even more unbearable.

Split into four constellations – area studies, the archive, the n-word and proverbs – ‘Conspicuous Invisibility’ captures the past and the present through a deep sense of where the artist has lived, including the Caribbean, North America and Europe. With creolity in mind, the first section sees Désert disintegrate borders by teasing out how migration passages are politicized. A map of the Caribbean comprising nine vellum panels stratified by red lines and blue waves, The Waters of Kiskeya/Quisqueya (2017) challenges the viewer’s perception of the region. In the upper right-hand corner, the African continent hugs the edge of the Caribbean Sea – alluding to the millions of enslaved Africans forced to migrate to the Americas.

‘Conspicuous Invisibility’ is uncannily precise in capturing the African diaspora in its saintly and unsettled forms. I was particularly enamoured by his Shrine of the Divine Negress (2009), a stained-glass panel piece depicting the actress Josephine Baker as a Black Madonna. (The French so revered Baker that she was the first Black woman to be inducted into the Pantheon in Paris.) With its religious iconography – the 12 butterflies surrounding Baker are emblematic of her 12 adopted children or, possibly, the 12 apostles – Shrine of the Divine Negress contrasts starkly with nearby works that explore the n-word and stereotypes of Blackness. In the video BLING (2017), for instance, Désert embodies the character ‘Blackamoor’, who is instructed by a white figure to darken his Black face even further. Whereas in GLORIA (2017), Désert seeks to integrate within bourgeois German society by adopting a flâneur aesthetic and being force-fed pork. While the former work critiques the reduction of our identities; the latter speaks powerfully to imposed assimilation.

Some artworks can shake us, inviting us to recall a supressed memory or a period of unrest. Sky Above Port-au-Prince Haiti 12th January 2010 (2012), for instance, initially resembles a celestial map. However, a cross cut into the red velvet paper nods to the Red Cross organization, while the various pins point to the human casualties of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The piece is a visual reminder of the cavernous death toll in the Caribbean capital and the aid that was forestalled despite an outpouring of donations and sympathy. There is a satisfaction to be found in Désert’s critique of non-governmental organizations in Haiti, while his visualization of the ruined city highlights the complacency of Western governments. Eliciting my own early childhood memories of Haiti, the map brought home to me the jarring contradiction between the country’s revolutionary past and its reactionary present.

As the first time I had seen a solo exhibition by a Haitian artist while living in Berlin, ‘Conspicuous Invisibility’ had a personal resonance for me. Yet, the show is not solely about Haiti and Haitians: the story Désert tells is universal. Despite the discomfort we may experience when impelled to confront our relationship to blackface or the n-word, the work’s power lies in trusting the viewer to witness the wounds of history with an unwavering commitment to truth.

Jean-Ulrick Désert’s ‘Conspicuous Invisibility’ is on view at SAVVY Contemporary until 16 July.

_{Main image: Jean-Ulrick Désert, Neque Mittatis Margaritas Vestras Ante Porcos ( detail), 2016, installation view. Courtesy: the artist. Photograph: © Marvin Systermans}