PARIS
APRIL 24 - MAY 23, 2024
Fondation H has invited Roxane Mbanga for a three-month residency in its Parisian space, where the artist is developing the sequel to her installation NOIRES she started in 2021.
Born in 1996, Roxane is a Cameroonian-French multidisciplinary artist, originally from Guadeloupe. Working at the junction of fashion, film, graphic design, photography, writing and performance, Roxane Mbanga considers herself a storyteller. Her artistic research focuses on the relationship between the lived body, an intimate entity, and the perceived body, a social receptacle for the projections of others. Through NOIRES [BLACK WOMEN], she questions, listens to, and transcribes the voices of women with plural identities.
Just because it is not visible does not mean it does not exist.
Artist Roxane Mbanga has created an oasis inParis. But unlike oases we can see from afar, with green vegetation emerging in the desert as a sign that at last we have reached a refuge and will be able to quench our thirst, rest, and find a welcoming spot, Roxane’s is hidden from view. Yet the one that is open and the one that is concealed both provide the same shelter, the same refuge for bodies exposed to an environment hostile to life, as well as a place to find water, rest, food, and a welcoming community. Therefore,it just makes sense to use the word oasis — a borrowing from one of the languages of Egypt and taken up in Greek and Latin, which describes a place witha water source where human beings find shelter and refuge in a hostile environment — to refer to what Roxane Mbanga has created.
By not showing off from afar, Roxane Mbanga’s oasis mirrors the sanctuaries built by Africans to escape the raids of slave traders, the refuges created by Maroons — those men and women turned into slaves — who fled the plantations and established free communities in the mountains or deep in the forests, out of sight and removed from the world of the master, and all those places of living that communities create to evade regimes of exploitation, racism and dehumanization. Roxane’s oasis is hidden behind the door of a gallery whose glass has been blacked out. It is only after we cross the entrance that our senses signal to our body and mind that they can take a deep breath. We feel that we have entered a refuge, a sanctuary, and are protected from Paris’ daily hostility. For Paris, a city celebrated for its romanticism and beauty, is also a city that pays tribute to men who built their glory with guns and cannons, and on blood by enslaving and slaughtering peoples they deemed inferior, as attested by the statues and monuments in its squares. In this city of cafés, restaurants and boutiques, lovely gardens, and streets lined with imposing buildings and palaces, which is visited by tourists from all over the world and crossed by passers-by every day, tens of thousands of black women are working, cleaning, sweeping, washing, ironing, cooking, serving, and taking care of children and the elderly. If their work and presence are essential to keep the city running smoothly, passers-by and tourists alike often choose to ignore them. Their tired bodies have no time to rest or enjoy the places they have cleaned, swept and tended. By setting up an oasis, Roxane Mbanga recognizes their right to rest, to access an oasis where they can catch their breath and relax. A place where they can escape an environment made hostile by racism and the injunction of a society that only wants to see them pass, occupied with the work assigned to them.
This urban oasis-refuge is part of Roxane Mbanga’s artistic practice. In her installations, she explores the links between the lived body, of which we are aware through touch, smell, sight and hearing, and the perceived body, which is the receptacle of projections and fantasies. Through heeding the voices of black women and taking an interest in their plural identities, Roxane wants to offer them havens of peace in a world where relationshipsare shaped by structural racism. She wants to make their individuality visible, free from the countless dictates that weigh on their existence and shackle them into uniformity.
Once inside this space, hidden from the outside world, we pass from a stonishment to wonder, realizing it is possible to createa space at the heart of Paris where women can free themselves from the weight of racist injunctions, relax, talk or say nothing, lie down or not. There areno strings attached. It is all about letting go. The first space calls for quietude, with cushions and soft lighting awaiting us. Down the staircase, we find ourselves in the heart of the installation: a bathroom. A place of self-care that awakens the senses. All our senses are called upon: touch — the hands that touch the skin —, smell — of soap, of perfumes —, sight, and hearing — with the sound of water. A vibrant, active space. An intergenerational space where transmission takes place from one generation to the next: here a young woman helping a body aged by work to relax, there an elderly woman teaching a purification ritual. A space for conversations sometimes whispered, other times full throated, for laughter and for sighs. From time to time we hear a chanted or whispered song, but never a word that would interrupt an atmosphere of quietude that each woman protects and preserves.
Through her oasis, Roxane Mbanga reminds us of a vital, elementary need historically denied by colonial-racial Europe to non-European peoples. Europe, which had been long insensitive to daily bathing— even believing it to be bad for the health —, introduced in its colonies the idea of a “clean” Europe as opposed to a “dirty” “rest” of the world, that it therefore had to purify. This did not make Europe any cleaner. Until the 19thcentury, London and Paris were notorious cesspools, the waters of the Thames and Seine were so thick with waste of all kinds that disgusting bubbles burst at their surface. But colonial ideology demanded a rigid separation between settlers and the colonized. This gave rise to a multiplicity of racist projections about the cleanliness and smell of non-European peoples. The source of the stench, however, was colonialism. The women, children and men of the African continent, who had bathed in the riversand lakes of their homeland, were forced to live in the stench of the barrackson the African coast, and then in the stink of the slave ship. The slaveholder’s house had to be cleaned and waxed every day. Yet this barely concealed the fetid smell of slavery. Plantations, mines and factories helped establish regimes of cleanliness based on race, class and gender. This ideology linked beauty to an odorless white body, which reality long contradicted: in 1954 in France, only 58% of homes had running water and only 26% had toilets. This racial separation between clean and dirty justified, and still justifies, the privatization and appropriation of water to satisfy the needs of the upper classes.
Most cultures are aware of the need to preserve and protect water resources, a vital component of human life. Water is used to wash newborn babies, it plays a central part in ancestral rituals, it is used to wash food, it soothes and heals wounds, it imparts scent. Running water produces a delightful sound, and plants and animals depend on it. We must manage it with respect, care and love. Baths are cultural rituals, and all peoples have invented architectural forms to turn this daily necessity into an art of living. In black tradition, water is associated with salvation, self-care and survival; immersing oneself in water is an act of purification against the humiliation and violence caused by racism. We live with and in water; up to 60%of the adult human body is water. The capitalism of extraction and consumption has turned this resource into a commodity. It has polluted, contaminated and privatized water, turning it into an object whose value is purely financial, to the point that in the West, we often no longer remember the respect we owe it. In this respect, I have in mind an episode from several years ago. I was in a southern country with a group of local women friends as well as French people gathered there for a conference. It was an extremely hot day, and we were visiting the hills surrounding the town where the conference was being held. As we approached a spring, someFrench people rushed up and I saw my women friends step back, then quicklyspeak to each other in their own language. Intrigued, I asked them what had happened. They explained that the spring was sacred, as it was a circumcision site for male children. It was therefore absolutely necessary to ask the spring for permission to drink its water, which it always granted. However, if we fail to do so, it will become and will remain polluted. By rushing in, the French had polluted the spring, so a prayer had to be said to apologize for what they had done. The fact of asking the spring for permission to drink its water showed the importance people attached to it. It was not an object of consumption, but part of a spiritual and cultural whole.
Through her installation, Roxane Mbanga not only challenges the colonial-racial divide, but also rebuilds a space of resistance, an intimate space of care where water plays a central role. She alerts us to the need to preserve and protect that which sustains our bodies and quenches thirst. In a world where, as a result of the climatic disaster caused by extraction, water is becoming increasingly scarce and where two-thirds of the world's population — from South countries or from poor racialized communities in the North — are likely to face water shortages by 2025, Roxane Mbanga provides us with a sanctuary that not only offers a peaceful space but also an invitation to reflection and action. And this is the purpose of an oasis, a place where we can rest and dream of a future full of joy and sensuality.
Françoise Vergès