Vladimir Cybil Charlier
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DESIRE, Johnny Was
What can the creative process tell us about desire, about interiority? How do the meditative practices of embroidery, sewing, and drawing become implicated in memory, identity, vulnerability, and subjectivity?
​

…Her latest installation, DESIRE, Johnny Was, broadens her thought process about the practice of creating art and aesthetic experiences. Flora and fauna embellish a rose-colored space lit atmospherically to mimic an 18th century boudoir. Familiar vegetation, flowers, and birds from both the Caribbean and the US occupy central spaces in DESIRE, Johnny Was. …What we see is a dramatic staging of a “diasporic boudoir”. Perhaps the centerpiece of the installation is a pink and beige-colored, ornate 18th century-styled dresser with an ornamental mirror. Quotations taken from 13th century Persian Sunni Muslim poet Rumi, Romantic Age poet William Blake, and Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes decorate the light gray-colored velvet lining of each drawer of the dresser. The quotations are embroidered using varying shades of purple thread: color and patterns are essential to this tactile-rich installation. A coquettish invitation is given to enter the room, to open the drawers and explore the quotations and luxuriate in the excessive sensuousness that comes from the pleasure of the haptic. Viewing this room, walking into this room, the viewer is allowed to explore the relationship between language and material, between allegory and narration, asking how do desire, yearning, want, and need operate in the historical process of cultural transformation that highlights diverse African diasporic experiences?

Jerry Philogene, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, American Studies Department
Dickinson College
4/17/2018
DESIRE, Johnny Was, 2018 (Right wall view) 18' x 18' x 10', mixed media
DESIRE, Johnny Was, 2018. (Frontal wall view) 18' x 18' x 10', mixed media
DESIRE, Johnny Was, 2018 (left wall view) 18' x 18' x 10', mixed media
DESIRE, Johnny Was, 2018 (Dresser closeup) 18' x 18' x 10', mixed media
DESIRE, Johnny Was, 2018 (Goethe drawer) 18' x 18' x 10', mixed media
DESIRE, Johnny Was, 2018 (Langston Hughes drawer) 18' x 18' x 10', mixed media
DESIRE, Johnny Was, 2018 (Panel details 1) graphite, encaustic and mixed media on wood panel
DESIRE, Johnny Was, 2018 (main wall detail) graphite and encaustic on wood panel and mixed media, acrylic on latex paint
DESIRE, Johnny Was, 2018 (Panel details 2) graphite, encaustic and mixed media on wood panel

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Copyright © 2022 Vladimir Cybil ​Charlier
  • WORKS
    • Prints >> >
      • Dream Deferred
      • Pantéon Project
      • Superstitions
      • Prints from 'The Voodoo Child'
      • ArtQuake 2010
      • 1805 for $999.99
    • Installations / Commissions >> >
      • Shipwreck
      • The Harlem Quilts
      • The Stranger Next Door
      • DESIRE, Johnny Was
      • Untitled, (Guédé Mani)
      • AIDS Chronicles 2010
      • Time Life Jungle
    • The Voodoo Child
    • Map-Requiem
    • Endezo-Haitian Paintings
    • Haitiana-Modules
    • Thezain-Synthesis
    • Collaborations >> >
      • Dream Deferred
      • Memories of a Utopic Island
      • Superstitions
      • The Politics of Paradise
  • About
  • Contact