Graham Fagen

About this book

This catalog is being published in the wake of the exhibition 'Graham Fagen. The Slave's Lament' showed at Galerie de l'UQAM. It brings together works from the multidisciplinary artist Graham Fagen, who represented Scotland at the 2015 Venice Biennale, on the theme of slavery and Scottish involvement in the fate of African people deported to the Caribbean in the 18th century.The drawings, with the look of masks or portraits, the seascape photographs and the imposing video and music installation shown here explore the tensions and emotions brought about by colonialism and the African slave trade. Today considerable feeling has been mobilized with the aim of reconciliation and redemption for the economic servitude and cultural oppression of peoples -- whether aboriginal, the product of immigration or subject to current insidious forms of servitude. Fagen's questioning of nationality and identity, however, is based on a particularly pertinent critique of the cultural and social heritage. At the invitation of curator Louise Déry, specialist of the arts of the Caribbean Erica Moiah James signs an essay that contextualizes and questions the work of Fagen.