Here are translated excerpts from an article by Pierre Malherbet—“La mémoire aux teintes indigo de l’artiste Valérie John— for the Centre Pompidou magazine (13 June 2025).
Malherbet writes, “Invited by the Centre Pompidou to exhibit her studio-work within the exhibition ‘Paris Noir,’ Martinican contemporary artist Valérie John presents an interactive installation stained with indigo, a color that carries a magical and historical significance in Africa and the Caribbean. A veritable altar to memory, this mixture of diverse images and objects connects Fort-de-France to Dakar, via Paris. Meet the ‘indigo woman.’”
Facing the sea in La Trinité, Martinique, the studio of Valérie John (born in 1964 in Fort-de-France) vibrates with memory and indigo. Invited to relocate this intimate space to the heart of the Centre Pompidou for “Paris Noir,” the artist engages much more than a piece: she transports a world. In a space set back slightly from the exhibition, this weaver of memories recounts her palimpsest art, made of superimposed layers, ritual gestures, and stories.
Studio-work: immersing oneself to create
At Beaubourg, artist Valérie John didn’t simply install a work: she moved her studio. For the visual artist, creation and space are one. Her “studio-work” refers to a living concept in which the physical space becomes an integral part of artistic creation. “You have to immerse yourself in the space,” she confides, “it’s what fertilizes our creations.” Then, stain it with indigo—the matrix color, the hue of memory—so that it reveals its visible and invisible contents.
La Trinité is Valérie John’s home base. “A composite space made of duality. I carry it with each of my overflows; I call them overflows.” [. . .] “I work; I weave. It’s really in this state of mind that I came to Beaubourg,” she says, when we meet her on the margins of her exhibition. Each movement becomes a fragment of this vast creative project—a new layer added to a work in progress.
The title of the installation, SECRET(S)… RÊVES DE PAYS… FABRIQUE À MÉMOIRE(S)… PALIMPSESTE …, 1998–2025, [Secret(S)… Dreams of the Country… Memory Factory… Palimpsest…, 1998–2025], specially created for the exhibition “Paris Noir,” bears witness to this: open dates, suspended plurals, dotted lines. Each “overflow” is but one chapter in a story in progress.
Palimpsest: Writing without Erasing
For Valérie John, everything begins with a layering. Nothing is deleted, everything is superimposed. Her artistic gesture is that of the palimpsest: a way of working on traces, without completely covering them. “The palimpsest is how I function as an artist, it’s my artistic gesture; not to undo things, but to create new layers.” She accumulates, she patches, she weaves. Each work becomes a millefeuille of memories, materials, past and present gestures.
This approach resonates with her own body, a wandering, perpetually traversing; a body on a journey, displaced, shaped by multiple influences, which implies that her artistic practice becomes a balancing act and an attempt at patchwork. Filling, connecting, repairing—without ever erasing what has been. “My work is simultaneously a wandering, a displacement, and a restructuring. So, I fill in everything I’ve already done when I build an additional layer of this palimpsest. It is in this journey that I situate myself,” the artist confides. [. . .]
[All photos by the author, Pierre Malherbet.]
Translation of excerpts by Ivette Romero. For full article (in French) and additional photos, see https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/pompidou-plus/magazine/article/la-memoire-aux-teintes-indigo-de-lartiste-valerie-john
Also see previous posts https://repeatingislands.com/2025/05/01/black-artists-in-postwar-paris-get-a-blockbuster-at-the-centre-pompidou/ and https://repeatingislands.com/2025/03/23/exhibition-paris-noir/