Charles Philippe Jeanpierre

@charlesphillippejeanpierre

My practice recognizes the erasure of our complex histories and challenges the narrative that we are perpetual outsiders. My work attempts to create the informed cultural context needed to make sense of the American connection to the Caribbean, and vice versa. + Perpetual Outsiders + Immigrant Story The lines, spaces, and gaps in my work represent the absences felt growing up in an immigrant home. My practice recognizes the erasure of our complex histories and challenges the narrative that we are perpetual outsiders. My work attempts to create the informed cultural context needed to make sense of the American connection to the Caribbean, and vice versa. It’s important for me to situate counter narratives within my conceptual works. Travel is an essential part of my practice used to uncover new perspectives on the lives of individuals living outside of the American paradigm. As a conceptual artist, whose works are fused through collage, the layering process in my works mirrors my intersectional identity. + I am able to create multidisciplinary works with pride and conviction because I was taught a different narrative about the complex places I come from. I was forced to embrace a positive outlook as a tool for inspiration, creativity, and survival. Ironically, I consciously practice and create art from a place of privilege and abundance. I grew up in a creole family that immigrated from Haiti. A country whose rich heritage is all too often reduced to being the most economically depressed nation in the western hemisphere. Our family migrated from one Black mecca to another. Chicago is known for its violence and black on black crime, but the city has played a central role in shaping who I am as an artist and who we are as a country. Chicago has produced some of the best in American art, culture, and political shifts. I draw inspiration from the city and its artists. + I employ sociology and history to create. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Issabella Wilkerson eloquently covered the history of discrimination and the creation of Black metropolis’s in “The Warmth of Other Suns”. I used her chronicles of the decades-long migration as inspiration for my works. Her depiction of African-Americans from the South to the North and West helped me better understand my story and our place within “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.” My art is a reclamation which re-imagines the parables of forgotten bodies in time and space. As a traveler, I recognize that we are facing more than racism globally in and outside of the art world. I believe there is an invisible American ‘Caste' system as described by Issabella Wilkerson. She describes it as an artificial hierarchy that helps determine standing and respect in all aspects of life. It creates assumptions of beauty and competence in the Art world, and finally determines who gets the benefit of the doubt and access to artistic resources to institutions. Often times this discrimination can mean life and death to artist and civilians. I use my art to help me better understand that there are George Floyds, Breonna Taylors, and Ahmaud Arberys across the globe that we never hear about. My art works to tell those stories.

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