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Terra Foundation of American Art, Giverny, France

1-5 July 2024: Water in the Black Atlantic

In July 2024, CBESA curated an exceptional residency with artists, writers and scholars from 14 countries with the support of the Terra Foundation of American Art.. Water Holds Memory studied the impact of African American art in contemporary construction of blackness in Europe, as well as the return of these European reformulations to the United States where they open exciting perspectives on American art and society. The focus of the residency was on the reception of visual artists Calida Rawles and Torkwase Dyson by (Black) European audiences. A singularity of studying these two artists in European contexts is that their works are deeply anchored in the history of the United States, yet they seem to provide languages and space to engage intimately with European affairs.

The idea for the seminar was born from a residency that Dr. Niang is completing at the Ateliers Médicis (Clichy-sous-Bois). The work with a group of residents, all of them Afro-French, African or Black was radically transformed after we dived into and experienced together the worlds of Faith Ringold, Carrie Mae Weems, Calida Rawles and Torkwase Dyson. Rawles and Dyson works in particular, and their anchoring in water and aquatic spaces struck a chord with our group. Following these steps, CBESA curated a summer residency in Giverny (France) to study how these stories of America/American art are understood and told by audiences not just in Paris, but also in Brussels, Lisbon or London. In a European context marked by enduring colorblindness and the refusal to name, acknowledge, historicize or gather data on race, how are these bodies of American art invested by (Afro)Europeans in their re|definition of blackness?

As an initiative centered in transatlantic circulations of knowledge and practices, Water Holds Memory paid special attention to the new conversation, artistic terrains and scholarly perspectives that are opened in the United States by these European engagement with American art. To this end, we were honored to receive Dr. Christina Sharpe, Dr. Rinaldo Walcott, poetess Canisia Lubrin and sculptor Torkwase Dyson whose expertise were key to understanding America’s contribution to global social debates, but also to recording how the “europeanization” of key topics of American art opens new ways of understanding American identity and expands the narrative of modern art in the United States.