Anais Verspan, *Envokasyon*, at the Jean-Paul Cesaire Gallery (La Veranda). *ENVOKASYON* is an invitation to summon the visible and invisible memories that inhabit the Guadeloupean territory. The title refers to the act of invoking: calling upon ancestors, landscapes, traditional skills, the silences of history, and the forces that continue to shape our present. It is also an invitation to listen to what objects, landscapes, and materials have to say to us. The exhibition transforms art into a space of transformation where the plant world, memory, and the artistic gesture converge to open up new narratives. It examines colonial legacies, celebrates ancestral craftsmanship through a sensory tapestry, and affirms the capacity of contemporary creation to transform the symbols, materials, and wounds of history into a sensory and shared experience. Anais Verspan After three years of study at the IRAVM (Regional Institute of Visual Arts of Martinique, 2001–2004), Anais VERSPAN (b. 1980, Guadeloupe) embarked on a career in fashion design by opening her own “Afro Exentrik concept showroom.” She made her debut by exhibiting her paintings for the first time at the Carrefour des Arts in Le Gosier (2009) and followed that with her first solo exhibition, “Bigidiplakata” (2010), at the Imagin’Art Gallery in Sainte-Rose. Since then, she has continued to present her work in both solo and group exhibitions at the local, national, and international levels (Belgium, Senegal, Martinique, Germany, Monaco, Portugal). As a multidisciplinary visual artist, Anais VERSPAN draws on her own analysis of the “I” and the “Self” as her primary subject matter and raw material, turning her gaze outward to explore bodies as repositories of memory, matrimony, “blackness,” and Afro-descendance, human and environmental ecologies, as well as contemporary societal shifts on our Caribbean islands. Among her solo exhibitions or “solo experiences” are KARATA (2014) at Fort Fleur d’Epee, Guadeloupe, and Et si l’espace museal était une Kaz? (2016), a carte blanche exhibition at Musarth. These two exhibitions demonstrated the maturity of her work in painting and photography. Anais VERSPAN is rapidly becoming a recognized painter and continues to “perform” her visual language through installations, photography, contemporary dance, collaborations, and research.... Her aesthetic universe is distinguished by the interplay between abstraction and figuration, black and color, matte and glossy, flat surfaces and depth. Her works masterfully reconcile materials and contrasts, like the two halves of a single duality oscillating between the present and the past, heritage and transmission, cultural traces and individual experiences. Exhibition Hours Tuesday through Friday: 1:00 PM – 6:00 PM Saturday: 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM Call 0596 70 79 31 for school groups and other groups. Guided tours available for groups of 10 or more. Tropiques Atrium, 6 rue Jacques Cazotte, Fort-de-France, 0596 70 79 29
