De Buck Gallery is pleased to release a new set of drawings from Marielle Plaisir’s ongoing series, The Malediction of Cham. Plaisir’s new drawings utilize color and surreal, dream-like imagery to counter concepts of oppression.
Plaisir began the Malediction of Cham works-on-paper in 2019 with a series of lyrical abstracted portraits delicately rendered with the use of inks, gold thread, and stones. Her new works continue to highlight figures who have fought and raised their voices against discrimination of race, class, and gender such as Jackie Robinson and Angela Davis.
Plaisir’s process began in historical and philosophical research, in which she came across the “curse of Cham” or “curse of Ham,” a misinterpretation of a Biblical story, which was ultimately used as a justification for anti-Black racism. Plaisir examines this myth, and the ways in which its deeply harmful legacy still influences anti-Black stereotypes and permeates today’s culture.
Within these drawings, Plaisir populates her background with lush imagery drawn from nature— constellations, natural forms, and flowers, inspired by both her Caribbean roots and her imagined ideal of a utopia without oppression. The works both resist and hope- they are reflective of Plaisir’s wish that her work will not only draw awareness to the importance of challenging harmful histories, but also speak to the interconnectedness of humans, the universality of fractured identities, and the power of recognizing and depicting inner worlds.
Plaisir views herself as both an artist and an activist, who weaves both history and imagination together into a visual language that is part-figurative narrative, part- symbolic and poetic abstraction. Each figure functions as a symbol for the fight against oppression, inspired by Plaisir’s own painful experiences of racism and the overlapping complexities of her own multicultural identity. The works, Plaisir hopes, will open a dialogue by offering her viewers a dreamscape through which to examine history’s connection to her experience of contemporary Black identity.
