Paris noir

Press release

From the creation of the magazine Présence africaine to that of Revue noire, ‘Paris noir’ traces the presence and influence of black artists in France between the 1940s and 2000.It highlights 150 artists of African descent, from Africa to the Americas, whose works have often never been shown in France. They were all part of a cosmopolitan Paris, a place of resistance and creation that gave rise to a wide variety of practices, ranging from a growing awareness of identity to a search for transcultural visual languages - and one that was particularly significant in the redefinition of modernity and post-modernity. The exhibition retraces half a century of struggles for emancipation, from African independence to the fall of apartheid, including the fight against racism in France.