Art is never
the object alone.
Anne-Laure Lemaitre shapes places
where makers and viewers belong.
The method by which we currently communally index the world originates from a Eurocentric predetermined perspective birthed in colonialism. It negates the infinite relationships humans have been developing with their surroundings and the boundless ways we may have spiritually connected to nature, space and time over millennia. While a monolithic frame of reference may somewhat allow for a broader understanding between cultures, it has too often been implemented through the brutal annihilation of any perceived ‘otherness.’ So many means of living and experiencing have been all but eradicated; seen as pagan, immoral, heretic, flawed. Yet, despite the systematic methods of erasure used in modern occidental societies to do away with any difference considered too fringe, some deeply-seated bonds are too profound to uproot.
In LusaHumma: Land of the Black Red, Utē Petit’s first solo presentation, a territory where black and indigenous communities reclaim their connection to the magical essence of a land in its wild and natural state arises from hidden, whispered dimensions. Reinventing a physical enclave inside Ailantha, straddling the Misi-Ziibi river and its adjoining wetlands and inhabited by her people, Utē voices into existence a reality in which intentional stewardship, reverence for native species and unbridled harmony with one’s surroundings are intrinsic to life. Wounded animals and humans embrace in deep sorrow; the separation and sheltering we so often seek from the elements and the artificial boundaries we create between species, spaces and beings crumble; the concept of home broadens to encompass limitless landscapes; signs from dreamed territories become tangible markings. Utē’s works possess an incandescent force and evocative power that seeps into the most hidden corners of one’s soul to eat alive at its certitudes. Under her hand, drawings, quilts and sculptures redefine the world anew. Their unequivocal presence challenges societal constructs too awry to resist her acute scrutiny.
But this narrative goes beyond folklore, storytelling or worldbuilding, it is, in fact, uncompromising resistance. It’s survival; giving space for bold, raw, real, carnal, at times violent pieces of a repressed reality to exist for all to see. The artist’s carefully crafted vernacular and thorough historical review speaks into existence a secular bond centuries of oppression have tried to decimate, suppress and erase.
LusaHumma is relentless and at times uncomfortable. It’s the manifestation of a primal force of life that will remain beyond western society’s best efforts to negate and expunge its very substance. Utē Petit’s practice balances in equilibrium the longing she has for an ancestral world she knows exists under endless layers of historical eradication and coercion, the urge to manifest its infinite beauty and sheer existence, and her will to voice the endless violence eating away at her people, exiled from their now unspoken primal refuge. And it’s at the nucleus of this tenuous alloy of intense, conflicting, vital impulses that resides the blunt true soul of LusaHumma. LusaHumma is a spirit, an identity but also a rebellion; the incarnation of a borderless nation far too powerful to bow into silent submission.
Photo: Alexander Laurent Rubalcava
Anne-Laure Lemaitre is a curator, writer, and producer based in New York, Paris, and the Nova Scotia wilderness. Her practice begins by questioning a territory: its physical and emotional dimensions, its history, its context, its belonging, before turning to the art it calls for. This orientation has shaped a body of work spanning the most experimental corners of the emerging art world and leading corporations and public institutions.
Many artists she has worked with early in their careers have since gone on to significant critical and market recognition. Those relationships rarely end with the exhibition. For several, she remains a resource: someone to think with, exchange with, workshop with.
For nearly twenty years, she has worked across scales and contexts: from intimate solo exhibitions at artist-run spaces to permanent public commissions, from single-artist career conversations to cultural programs spanning five continents. Her practice is built around the specific rather than the repeatable, treating the space, the institution, the sidewalk, and the online environment each as curatorial material in its own right.
Lemaitre writes regularly about art for catalogues, publications, and for herself. Her writing, whether commissioned or not, tends toward the felt rather than the prescribed: a belief that how we speak about a practice, and what it does to us, shapes how it is seen and received.
Intentional art programs · Site-specific commissions
Curatorial strategy · International practice
Art In Context is a curatorial production practice whose work ranges from international public commissions, corporate collections and multi-venue cultural strategies to ongoing collaborations with artists, brands and cultural institutions.
Every project begins with the same questions: what does this place need, what story belongs here, and who should tell it. That orientation shapes everything from artist selection and fabrication to the logic of how a program holds together in one location or across multiple sites.
Drawing on nearly twenty years of work, Art In Context has built the infrastructure to operate anywhere and at any scale. An extensive network of creative partners allows it to move from a single commission to a coordinated program spanning dozens of sites without losing the specificity that makes a project land. Art In Context works worldwide.