Pol Taburet: Sweets for the sweets

“No sound beating ends where it began. None of the beaten end up how we began.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

 

Pol Taburet was the first artist to work in Pivô’s new space in Salvador, where he produced some of the works for the São Paulo exhibition. In the first few weeks after his arrival, the walls of his temporary studio were covered by large, entirely black canvases. Owing to the painstaking bureaucracy of Brazilian customs, Taburet’s materials were detained for longer than expected. His connection with the northeastern city was immediate. As he soaked in a profusion of new synesthetic input and information, those massive pitch-black squares remained at a standstill, haunting him. 
 

I read somewhere that more humans have visited outer space than the deep sea. Until recently, scientists generally held the belief that color vision wasn’t essential in the depths of the ocean. It’s too far for sunbeams to penetrate, so there’s no light to reveal color. However, as researchers studying the evolution of color vision analyzed the genomes of some of the many mysterious species that populate the planet’s largest habitat, they were proven wrong. The silver spinyfin, for instance, has more genes for discriminating dull light than any other vertebrate on the planet. Bioluminescence is, in fact, a form of defense and a navigation tool in that inky darkness. Watching Pol’s painting process during his time in Brazil made me think of those creatures that make their own light and harbor an enduring mystery. Imagine the vibrant hues they might see and that we have no clue about. Perhaps what some call the ‘supernatural’ might just as well reside on the deepest sea floors, below the edge of darkness. 
 

We believe we see the world as it is. We don’t. We see the world as we need to – or as we have been programmed to – in order to make sense of our existence. Only the first few top layers of the oceans are illuminated. The “sunlight zone” extends down about two hundred meters, and the “twilight zone” extends down another seven hundred meters below that. In the “midnight zone”, the “abyssal zone”, and the “hadal zone”, there exists only darkness, and the light generated by life itself. Much like deep-sea creatures, the paintings of the French-Guadeloupian artist appear to radiate their own light and inhabit a boundless and somewhat scary place (or time?). His finely stylized scenes and calculated gore unveil another world where eerie spectral figures seem to guard a secret, and to fully grasp them, one should be able to keep it. 
 

Navigating through the hypnotic twists and immanent upheavals that Taburet orchestrates requires a sort of night vision; an ability to delve into the darkness until your eyes start adjusting to the lack of light and colors become as bright as they can be: a bright darkness. His work – its aesthetics, inspirations, and intentions – emerges from a syncretic and deeply personal repertoire, a non-hierarchical mix that ranges from voodoo deities and Afro-Atlantic oral history to funk and trap-hop tunes, all while nodding to Western painting traditions. 
 

The brand-new two and three-dimensional works grouped under the title Sweets for Sweets draw inspiration, among other things, from a famous American character: Candyman. Originated in Clive Barker's 1985 short story, he became notorious as the protagonist in a cult horror series during the early 1990s. In the films, he is portrayed as a black man brutally murdered due to a forbidden interracial love affair in the 19th century; he returns as an urban legend, mercilessly killing anyone who summons him by uttering his name five times in front of a mirror. The hook-wielding, vengeful ghoul typically appears accompanied by a swarm of bees. He haunts the area of Cabrini-Green, an extant and problematic public housing development in Chicago, which is a typical example of urban gentrification. 
 

As a genre, horror is preoccupied with the unknown and the ostensibly monstrous, a fixation that manifests in visions of otherness. We tell stories and create images to understand ourselves and our context; yet, these same stories can turn humans into beasts and justify destruction, contingent upon the point of view of their creator. Those who summon Candyman must confront their own reflection before the ghoul becomes a deadly material presence fueled by fear and collective trauma. In today’s context, it is impossible to disregard the connection between the spell to summon Candyman – ‘Say His Name’ – and the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement to ‘Say Their Names’. 
 

By moving between Salvador and São Paulo, Taburet witnessed firsthand the stark effects of structural racism in this part of the world, where segregation underscores the urban fabric of most cities. Pol’s hybrid creatures, not unlike so many people living in dire conditions, seem to have invented their own ways to shine and thrive. In the exhibition, the bioluminescent slime with which Taburet renders his characters – employing a meticulous airbrush  technique – works both as camouflage and a war cry. A recurring figure appears in most paintings, akin to a narrator, or perhaps more aptly, a a griot or an egungun. Like the storytellers and deities of West Africa, the figure seems to be the guardian of Taburet’s personal underworld, channeling their ancestors and telling us stories. 
 

The black canvases, awaiting the artist’s first brushstrokes, were unaware that they would soon convey an imaginary depiction of an underworld and its occult, mysterious articulations. Like an AI submarine going into the Mariana Trench or a spirit possession within a Voodoo ritual, Pol Taburet’s work opens a middle passage into a multitude of situations animated by the ecstasies of chromatic saturation and ethereal formations. While discussing the book One Black Sentence by fellow artist-writer Renee Gladman, Fred Moten asks, “But does the figure/ground thing work if the ground is black? The blackground: that nonrepresentational capacity that lets all representation take place”.

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This remark also seems to aptly describe Pol Taburet’s exhibition. He seems to have turned the whole room into a blackground, where you are almost immediately beaten in a rap battle you never knew you had entered. You can never fully grasp its pace, and, at the same time, you can’t get enough of it. Sweets for the Sweet is compelled to restore some style in a broken world. It reveals a realm of spirits to those willing to dance along and, most importantly, to those who know how to keep a secret. 

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1. BROWN, Jericho. The tradition. Copper Canyon Press, 2019.
2. Black Lives Matter is an international activist movement, originating in the African-American community, that campaigns against violence directed at people of color. The BLM regularly organizes protests around police killings of people of color, and broader issues of racial discrimination, police brutality, and racial inequality in the US criminal justice system.
3. For some West African people, griots are those who tell stories, narrate the events of a people, passing on traditions to future generations.
4. Egungum is a Yuruba term from religions of African origin that designates the spirits of important dead people who return to earth.

5. GLADMAN, Renee e MOTEN, Fred. One Long Black Sentence. Ithaca, NY: Image Text Ithaca Press, 2021.