CeDo

February 12, 2023

While wandering around Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe recently, the Gazette had the good fortune to wander into a quirky little gallery there called The Factory-971. Two garage bay size openings beckoned passers by to pop in and have a look around. Upon entering, the visitor was treated to trippy music, comfy chairs, a coffee bar, a selection of souvenir knick knacks (including bottles of some designer rums), and best of all, the art of CeDo (Insta: @Cedoartiste). Her art is hard to describe except to say it’s both powerful and strange at the same time.

The Factory on Rue Achille-René Boisneuf in Pointe-à-Pitre.

A wall of portraits greets the visitor, their vintage vibe accentuated by ornate frames depicted within the paintings themself, exotic get ups, and fragments of ancient maps that can be read vaguely through their translucent faces. They evoke an earlier time, namely the age of European colonialism, when romantic fascination with far away lands was the rage. These works felt like a send up of the Orientalist fantasies of that era, and at the same time, a nod to the enduring legacy of empire that still pervades the Caribbean today.

The exhibit takes a surprising turn with the next group of artworks. Here the artist appears to mix a bit of Gray’s Anatomy into the portraiture. If you saw an exhibit called Bodies you may recognize the sense of awe combined with feeling a little grossed out that looking at our internal organs can provoke.

Particularly after a couple of years during which we collectively experienced a pandemic that featured mass burials, ventilator shortages, and endless updates of organ systems adversely effected by the virus itself or by the vaccine designed to mitigate it, some of these may feel excessive. Maybe it’s ‘too soon’ as the saying goes, but this triptych from 2020 may one day inform History’s understanding of what we went through, together, in our time here on Earth.

“Appropriation” (2021) features some elements we’ve seen thus far in CeDo‘s other works here. It’s a portrait that includes an old map, and adds a scream. Lines suggesting electrodes, rivers, or even spermatazoa emanate outward from her anguished face. The objects that comprise her appropriation headdress feature familiar icons that include a Benin bronze Oba and Egypt’s Sphinx. She has blue eyes and all the other ones shown are green. The wired subject screams silently here, like her better known counterpart painted by Edvard Munch. Bloody tears run down her face like Medea’s mascara in Times Square. Perhaps the appropriated African art works around the corner in the Schœlcher Museum can hear her scream?

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Here’s a two part interview with artist CeDo (@Cedoartiste), in French, with machine translated English and Spanish subtitles (CC) available as an option.