Art of Reparations

This juridical and moral notion is at the center of many social issues at local, national and international levels, in order to set up means to compensate for the transatlantic slave trade and, by extension, the slavery, colonial and post-colonial eras. The Reparation can take several forms : individual or collective financial reparations, moral reparations, and memorial reparations.
The will here is to make an act of reparation. To use the utopian and social functions of art to repair our today, sick of yesterday.

This artistic project is a continuation of the exhibition "Reparations" presented at the Fonds d'Art Contemporain de Guadeloupe in 2016 by François Piquet.

Download the digital version of the exhibition catalog (french version only).

Formulate a Reparation request

The processes of reparation are envisaged in multiple ways (individual, collective, etc), and declined sometimes blurred or phantasmagoric interpretations.
In order to realize this idea of Reparation and the processes that may result from it, it is important to dissect the different levels of complexity due to the time elapsed, the uniqueness of each case, the magnitude of a task scaled of our contemporary society.
So I created an Slavery Crimes Victims Reparations Application Form, which I invite you to fill, individually.

See the Slavery Crimes Victims Reparations Application Form (6 A4 pages)

Dowload the Slavery Crimes Victims Reparations Application Form, ZIP format.

Timalle

To celebrate its 10 years of existence, theInternational Slavery Museum of Liverpool presents from August 23, 2017 to April 8, 2018 the "INK & BLOOD" exhibition. On this occasion, François Piquet realized "Timalle", a sculpture made of Slavery Crimes Reparation forms, that the artist will shackle with iron blades coming from the former Darboussier sugar factory, site of the current ACTe Memorial of Guadeloupe. This process itself is archived by a film, presented with the sculpture thus realized.

See "Timalle"
Courtesy of International Slavery Museum of Liverpool.

Reparations : a contemporary art exhibition

Rather than remain petrified by the magnitude of a task at the scale of our contemporary society, this project addresses the painful aspects of this History - which is ours - to repair the conditions of the meeting, to "tinker with the incurable" according to the formula of Mohammed El Baz.

The "Reparations" exhibition is formalized around 5 axes:

- A skull without face / Reliquaries
- Reparations / Simulacra
- The factory of black / Moun Brilé
- The School of Beauty / Educational Workshops
- What can be saved

Download the digital version of the exhibition catalog (french version only).

Reparation : artist residency with schoolchildren.

Every July in Sainte-Anne(Guadeloupe, FWI), there is a festival of Gwoka, Guadeloupe drum music, directly resulting from slavery. The Gwoka dance relies on the concept of "bigidi" (imbalance and movement). The artistic proposal is based on the resonance of the "bigidi" with the Reparations processes.

The artist led workshops with about 250 schoolchildren (aged 6 to 11). After discussing the history of slavery, and relating the notions of imbalance and reparation, the children made drawings of characters in imbalance, in "bigidi", on a page of the reparation request form designed by the artist. Some of their work has been reproduced to be pasted in large format on the walls of Sainte-Anne.
Large outdoor sculptures and a residency rendering exhibition in the Town Hall of Sainte-Anne completed this process.
See the residency.