Art & the History of Art Anlè, Anba Above and below the Homeisland Works by Edwige Charlot

Anlè, Anba
This exhibition explores the lore of Creole ecology and landscape. Anlè, Anba (above, below) centers 'Creole' as a construct and a consequence of the New World. This construct of Creole and creoleness have been characterized as a melting pot, quilt, or having an admixture quality, or distilled and suspended as hybridity.

With this series of works, I hope to situate this construct beyond the confines of a flattening, linear continuum by illustrating the alchemy of spirits, land, and water that forged the cultural net between the New World and the Old World.

Visual concepts in my work use a lexicon of plant motifs and silhouettes, land and water imagery, religious symbols, and tropical/colonial architecture. I have recently been interested in the symbolic motifs of water and how it represents the interconnectedness of a diasporic Creole experience. Water as a symbol for the diaspora, being of one origin and many places simultaneously.

About Edwige Charlot
Edwige Charlot is a French-born immigrant artist-printmaker, based in Providence, RI. Within their Haitian lineage and tradition, they borrow and meld installation, collage, textile and printmaking into a visual, experiential creole. Using matrix-based techniques and technology, Charlot employs multi-layered, lexical works as meditations on identity and belonging, and the enmeshment of diaspora, memory and migration. Charlot has received support for their work from Interlace Fund, St. Botolph Club Foundation, and the Maine Arts Commission. Recently, they have been an artist in residence at BOOM Concepts in Pittsburgh, PA, a guest lecturer at Fordham University, a visiting artist at the Chautauqua School of Art, and an exhibiting artist in the New England Triennial 2022 at the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA.