Jean-François Boclé is a

Martinican Martinique ( ; or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It was previously known as Iguanacaera which translates to iguana island in Carib language, Kariʼn ...

artist. His practice mixes poetic writing with installation, painting, sculpture, video, photography, intervention in the public space and

performance A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Performance has evolved glo ...

Life

Jean-François Boclé was born in 1971 in

Fort-de-France Fort-de-France (, , ; ) is a Communes of France, commune and the capital city of Martinique, an overseas department and region of France located in the Caribbean. History Before it was ceded to France by Spain in 1635, the area of Fort-de-Fra ...

, Martinique,

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

, living his childhood years in Saint-Esprit. He moved to Paris at fifteen, where he currently lives and works. After his studies in Modern Literature at Sorbonne university, he was trained first at the École nationale supérieure d'art de Bourges and then at the

École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine The Seine ( , ) is a river in nor ...

of Paris.

Exhibitions

Everything Must Go Installation At The Saatchi Gallery - London

Jean-François Boclé participated in several biennials such as the 1st Biennial of Thessaloniki (2007, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Greece), showing "Tout doit disparaître! (Everything must go!)". This is a work Bocle has repeated through his career, beginning with a show at Espace Oscar Niemeyer, in Paris, in 2001. In an installation at the Saatchi Gallery in 2015, it was described as: "a sea of blue plastic bags forms an abyss, a quasi-memorial to lives lost at sea during the transatlantic slave trade." He took part in a group work entitled “Integration and resistance in the global era. A critical territory” at the 10th

Havana Biennial The Bienal de La Habana was a traditional Latin, Caribbean event, originated in Havana, Havana, Cuba, that aims to raise awareness to promote contemporary art and giving priority to Latin Americans, Latin-American and Caribbean artists. The eve ...

(2011, Cuba). In September 2011 he participated in the 8th Biennial of Mercosur in Porto Alegre (Brazil). In 2008 the

Bildmuseet Bildmuseet () is a contemporary art museum in Umeå, northern Sweden. History The museum was founded in 1981 by Umeå University and it exhibits Swedish and international contemporary art, visual culture, design, and architecture, sometimes alo ...

Umeå Umeå ( , , , locally ; ; ; ; ) is a city in northeast Sweden. It is the seat of Umeå Municipality and the capital of Västerbotten County. Situated on the Ume River, Umeå is the largest Urban areas in Sweden, locality in Norrland and the t ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

, devoted the entire Museum to Boclé for its largest solo exhibition to date, to represent the characteristics of his art, "the wide range of media employed, the presence of precise and challenging topics, the relationship with a colonial past and a post-colonial present ". In 2010, he gave a solo exhibition at the 28th Art Brussels Contemporary Art Fair. In 2011 Boclé was Artist in Residence at the Instituto Buena Bista in Curaçao. He was also part of a touring show, ''Fetish Modernity'', which visited the

Royal Museum for Central Africa The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) (; ; ), communicating under the name AfricaMuseum since 2018, is an ethnography and natural history museum situated in Tervuren in Flemish Brabant, Belgium, just outside Brussels. It was originally b ...

(Tervuren, Belgium), the

Museo de América Museo may refer to: * ''Museum'' (2018 film), Mexican drama heist film * Museo station, station on line 1 of the Naples Metro {{disambiguation ...

in Madrid, the Naprstek Museum in Praha, the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna, the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden (Netherlands), and the

Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen The (NMVW) () is an overarching museum organisation for the management of several ethnography, ethnographic museums in the Netherlands, founded in 2014. It consists of the Tropenmuseum () in Amsterdam, the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal (village) ...

in Stockholm over four years. The exhibition was described in the Museo de América catalogue as: "created by six European Museums, tinvites visitors to explore the notion of

modernity Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular Society, socio-Culture, cultural Norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the ...

. (...) This idea is expressed via several themes: criticism of the legacy of

ethnography Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

museums through contemporary art; (...)." Also in 2011, he participated in the International Festival of contemporary sculpture (30 cities in Northern France), and the 8th Mercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre (Brazil).

Exhibitions

2007 1st Thessaloniki Biennial, Greece 2009 Group Show Kreyol Factory, Paris 2009 10th Havana Bienal, Cuba 2010 Festival of Contemporary Sculpture ''Escaut, Rives et dérives'', France 2010 31st Biennial of Pontevedra, Spain 2010 Group show ''Global Caribbean'', Miami

Publications

Articles

* Boclé Jean‑François “Outre-Mémoire Un Mémorial Sonore Et Visuel.” '' Africultures'' 2014 pp. 162–162. * Boclé Jean‑François and Anna Seiderer. “La Peau Morte De L’Écriture. Un Entretien Avec Jean-François Boclé.” ''Esclavages & Post-Esclavages'' (20220519) 2022.

External links

Jean-François Boclé
(official website)
Jean-François Boclé
on vimeo

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bocle, Jean-Francois 1971 births Living people People from Fort-de-France Caribbean artists French conceptual artists