“I drew inspiration from family archive images of my parents’ generation in Haiti to create the the Ombre Portrait (Shadow Portrait) series. Reflecting on the concepts of cultural identity and memory, the darkness of these intensely opaque bodies resembles an abyss. These immense voids do not serve to erase their identities but rather to represent the vastness of stories and the numerous layers of memories.”

– ­­­­Michaëlle Sergile

 

Michaëlle Sergile is an independent artist and curator working mainly on archives including texts and works from the postcolonial period from 1950 to today. Her artistic work aims to understand and rewrite the history of Black communities, and more specifically of women, or communities living in diverse intersections, through weaving. Often perceived as a medium of craftsmanship and categorized as feminine, the artist uses the lexicon of weaving to question the relationships of gender and race.

She has recently exhibited at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art de Joliette and the Off Biennale de Dakar. Her name was also on the long list of the prestigious Sobey Award for the Arts in 2022. In 2023, she won Visual Artist of the Year at the Gala Dynastie and began a 12-month residency at the Darling Foundry. She will exhibit her work at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and the McCord Stewart Museum in 2024.