Imprints by Philippe Attie

“As a Haitian and Afro-descendant I wanted to paint this picture and symbolically place an aureola made of an extract from a code noir (black code or “edict on the slave police”) to question the imprints of my ancestral unique slavery past. While slavery is a universal phenomenon, the slave trade (from the 15th to the 19th century) is distinguished by three fundamental specificities both in terms of its duration (about four centuries), its legal organization by the political powers of the time (the black codes) and its ideological legitimation (the intellectual construction of anti-black racism). These imprints constitute a major element of my identity and determine my relation to the identity of the other, after all, aren’t we all made of the imprint that remains in us of those who have disappeared?” – Philippe Attie