2023-11-20 15:30:37
Who knows the story of Sanité Bélair? Those who have traveled to Haiti may have seen it on the local currency. This former freed slave played a key role in her country’s fight for independence by becoming one of the rare female officers in the revolutionary army led by Toussaint Louverture. If representations of this fighter are rare, here she is in majesty, wearing a cocked hat and with a fierce look, in the nave of the Pantheon.
His striking portrait adorns a fabric banner hung alongside nine other little-known figures in the fight against slavery. These shimmering works, which steal the spotlight from the Christian martyrs and the kings of France decorating the building, are the result of carte blanche given by the Center of National Monuments to Raphaël Barontini.
The 39-year-old artist has been working since 2017 to give a face to “resistant and resistant” that the national novel has obscured, from the Chevalier Saint-Georges to Thomas Alexandre Dumas, the first black general in the French army and father of the famous writer.
« Black Waterloo »
“These figures are only known in overseas territories,” deplores Raphaël Barontini, who grew up in Seine-Saint-Denis and whose ancestors come from Guadeloupe, Reunion, Italy and Brittany. Both anchored in French culture and artisan of creolization through art as Édouard Glissant theorized it, he creates hybrid works, mixing techniques (acrylic, ink, screen printing, etc.) and cultural references.
See his portrait of Cécile Fatiman, this voodoo priestess who helped spark the Haitian slave revolt. A mask from Benin, the cradle of voodoo, sits alongside 18th century French lace, a nod to the aristocratic status of this rebel proclaimed “princess” of the kingdom of Haiti in 1811. The bottom of her face comes from one of the 700,000 photographs in the photographic collection of the Museum of Man, in an artistic diversion of “the ethnographic inventory carried out by the colonial empire”.
In the south transept of the Pantheon, it is not a historical character but an event that Raphaël Barontini brings out of oblivion: the battle of Vertières, won in 1803 by Haitian insurgents against Napoleonic troops, is displayed in panoramic format ( 20×5 m), in counterpoint to the mounted canvases of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Jules-Eugène Lenepveu. “It’s an episode that only American and Canadian academics have really studied even though it is a “black Waterloo”! “, the visual artist is indignant.
Another exhibition on the figures of the fight against slavery
In the basement, a second exhibition fills in the gaps in national memory. Curator Florence Alexis reconstructs four centuries of struggle through explanatory panels, objects, works or archives, and several digital installations.
One of them, designed by Yale University, strikes the mind: the incessant flow – and exponential until the abolition of slavery – of Portuguese, English or French slave ships is materialized by colored dots . «Many people think they know this story, but how many know that more than 13 million Africans arrived in America? “, asks Florence Alexis.
Some windows display rare documents such as these letters from Toussaint Louverture and Napoleon, exceptionally lent by the American collector Walter O. Evans. “In the United States, many politicians still claim that African-Americans played no role in winning their own freedom. This exhibition proves exactly the opposite,” rejoices the former Detroit surgeon who has built, over four decades, an impressive collection of African-American art.
He bought his first paintings so that his daughters could discover artists that museums overlooked. His passion quickly spread to “everything relating to black history”, accumulating in his house in Savannah (Georgia) nearly 100,000 books and documents, which he now strives to make accessible to researchers and schools. He notably bequeathed to Yale one of the largest funds in the world on the abolitionist activist Frederick Douglass. For this octogenarian, ” the struggle continues “.
—–
Few black personalities pantheonized
The recent entry into the Pantheon of Joséphine Baker should not obscure the reality: the black personalities honored in this high place of national memory can be counted on the fingers of one hand. If the Haitian Toussaint Louverture and the Guadeloupean Louis Delgrès each benefit from a commemorative plaque, the great figures of the abolition of slavery present are white, like the ardent Abbé Grégoire (1750-1831). defender of the rights of “people of color”, or of Victor Schœlcher. Entering the Pantheon at the same time as the latter in 1949, Félix Éboué (1884-1944) is, for his part, better known for his action in the Resistance than for the fact that he is descended from slaves emancipated in 1848.
#Pantheon #search #forgotten #heroes #fight #slavery