The most significant occurrence in the life of an immigrant is ‘leaving’. Leaving your home ground, entering a new world, wherever that is; your point of reference is forever vividly engraved in your memory. 
Leaving Martinique at the age of 14, artist Jean Francois Boclé (Fort-de-France, ’71) moved to France, the motherland. In a way it is not really leaving your country; it is moving to ‘the Metropole’. After his studies in Modern Literature at Sorbonne University, he was trained from 1991 to 1998 first at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Bourges and then at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris.

The ‘leaving’ and his ‘point of reference’ became an important part of his work. Just as our former resident, Otobong Nkanga, Boclé also uses a broad range of media to get his point across: installation, painting, performance or photography. Closely looking at the relationship between France and her former colonies, but also commenting on the general way the former colonizers are stigmatizing and ignorant towards ethnicity and ‘authenticity’, his work is mainly critical towards the way we seem to be unable the let go of the thought of ‘the other’.

Over the last four weeks Boclé has been a guest artist within the framework of IBB’s Mondriaan residency program (IPS), closely investigating the Caribbean life and customs on Curacao. In a 5 day workshop entitled ‘La Boca Pregunta’, Boclé encouraged our students to reflect on their own world and create a work that responds to these thoughts in a poetic way.

Upcoming Thursday, January 27th, from 6:30 to 8:30 Jean Francois Boclé will give a lecture on his work and present the result of his workshop with the IBB students. We hereby invite you all to our premises at Klinika Capriles, Orkidia building. Admission is free, as ever!
More information: www.institutobuenabista.com and www.jeanfrancoisbocle.com