After the performance of her piece L’homme rare on 10 May, Nadia Beugré will enter into discussion with the decolonial philosopher Norman Ajari. Their conversation will make it possible to link and compare Beugré’s artistic practice with Ajari’s research. The main areas of focus will be the questioning of black masculinity and of the black male body as an object of efficient consumption. The first axis will link Ajari’s academic work on the deconstruction of black masculinity as dominant and dehumanised, to the staging by Beugré of men performing practices characterised as being more feminine and testing harshly constructed and assimilated masculinities. The second axis will confront one of the starting points of Beugré’s creations for L'Homme Rare, namely, old photos of slave markets in Ivory Coast, as a representation of the merchant gaze held by the Europeans on black bodies, and their persistence, to Ajari’s reflection on the enhancement of the musculature of the black body during the slave markets, as an indicator of the performance of that body and encouraging the consumption of this ‘commodity’, which relates to the fetishisation of the black body’s attributes today. The discussion will be moderated by socio-cultural organiser Eric Cyuzuzo.

 See also: L'homme rare
 

Confronted with the SARS-CoV-2 crisis, we had to cancel this project