Mission
In this multimedia exhibition, Plaisir invites viewers into a lush and beautiful dream, into an imagined world “without prejudice, discrimination, or acts of domination." The artist upends and erases hierarchies. Luxury and pleasure are no longer exclusive, and are offered to all. Deep, dark paintings speckled with bright constellations celebrate blackness. Feathers, crystals, textiles, and light all appeal unapologetically to the senses. Leather gloves for hard labor are celebrated and rendered in porcelain. Vibrant backlit collages, in a medium evoking the dreams of cinema, present tropical paradises where no conquest or colonization - or Fall - have taken place, where any chains are like jewelry, and where black and white photographs of inspiring figures like Ruby Bridges and Miles Davis are more vivid and specific than their companions, aristocratic figures extracted from European oil paintings. Portraits are appropriated and made strange, the particular and individual made symbolic, in some cases detached from history, in some cases made emblematic of resistance, in all cases made dreamlike. Stuffed fabric frames are more bodily than the faces they contain, and textiles and clothing that would have once signaled social rank are equalized.
Appealing to the imagination and senses of the viewer, Plaisir creates a poetic and egalitarian utopia.
Vision
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