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THE BURNING WAVE
Louisa Marajo
Burns of existence (2021)
Bloody red
Red of flames
throughout the orange
The Sea is inflamed
Since the blood
of our ancestors
has flowed in its raging
waves
Does the Earth
have the color of fire?
Bloody red
Red of flames
since its blood flows
with each tree cut
The Earth is enraged,
Fire
Live ammunition (2021)
The real
but which real
Not that of Paris
but that of my colony
New or
eternal colony?
Will she imagine another Reality
Vitality
How could she Emancipate itself
when she is Poisoned
Here in Paris
do we know the fight against the cost of living?
We imagine
its landscape
Instead of living
in its dust,
dust in the ocean
Volcano
They disintegrated
for we are at War
It’s up to us to recompose
our Imaginations
our Atmosphere
SWAT
Shooting with real bullets
La vague enflammée (The burning wave)
in-situ installation for the Dakar Biennale, 2022
Here the box
is in the work
The journey is the work
The bomb that resonates
The work
Between the Earth and the Sea
The return
to Africa
Sailing in a box
A transport crate
A crate of colonization
that explodes
and exposes
The journey is the work
Between the Earth and the Sea
Here the Wind
The Air
The root encountered
Related
Metamorphosed
Violent ashes (2022)
My head is a volcano
And I spend my time smoking
unsuspected ideas
My head is this volcano
that contemplates the damage of its own smoke
Fiery smoke
like this wayward desire
My head is this volcano
that burns
and bursts your prejudices
My desire is drifting away
and I can’t fulfill
this toxic dream
My desire goes far, far away
adrift
out of control
from this wetland
Paradox
Possible dream
Alternative zone
Controlling the inaccessible
outside the limits
Overdose
Adrenaline
My desire goes far away
adrift
And I can’t realize
this translucent dream
Acid
So enjoyable
Paradox
Everything is closed
Broken
Salty and sweet
Stuck in reality.
Landscape, graphite on paper, 190x133cm’2020
I have a match as a bookmark
to stop the fire of words
then start it again
Rekindling of an old flame
I have a match as a bookmark
to listen to the marks of the wind
Howling
Blowing
the weight of the words
Swirling the meaning of fire
I have a match as a bookmark
to trace the madness of
the burning dream
stopping before the escape
to ignite
the impulse of what comes next
Hands of dust, 2022
Oil barrel
It is not in this Gold
that I carry
the weight of my existence
but in a barrel of Catastrophes
Oil spill tide
Flowing into the Sea
Smoke of my ancestors
It is in exile
that I build myself.
Totem debout (Standing totem), 130x137x7cm, mixed media on canvas print, 2022
I gardened the sea
with my atmospheric flowers
Standing totems
between sky and earth
I have gardened the sea
igniting our syncretic
shores
Chaos unbolt
My flowers have grown
and metamorphosed
the limits
Translation: Frédéric Neyrat (revised by Monique Allewaert)
Louisa Marajo (1987, Martinique) is a multidisciplinary artist. With drawings, photographs, sculptures, and poems, she invents chaotic installations telling her own diasporic story. Visually and physically decompartmentalized, her work—like a construction site after a hurricane—is made of multiple layers analyzing the state of a world in perpetual change. Since 2018, she pays attention to the ecological disaster represented by the proliferation of sargassum in the Caribbean Sea, relating it to the current migratory chaos, one of the consequences of the Capitalocene. How to welcome and create with the remains of human entropic activity? How to live with, and in, the chaos that is outside and inside us?
She has participated in several group exhibitions, including the Perez Art Museum in Miami and the Biennale de Dakar 2022. She is one of the artists selected for the Rencontres Photographiques de Bamako 2022. Her work is notably present in the collections of the CNAP (National Center for Plastic Arts) and the MACMA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Martinique).
ALIENOCENE 