Clara Verdier

Clara Verdier is an interdisciplinary artist who traverses the intersections of history, ethnography, sociology and the arts in an attempt to address trauma, oppression and reconstruction. Verdier produces work in a variety of media including film, photography, text and painting. Her work explores practices and issues related to postcolonialism, socio-political concerns, equality and justice.

Verdier’s research investigates power and colonial privileges, Eurocentric legacy and its effects on the world of knowledge as well as the politics of world systems. She is particularly concerned about how social science has been constructed and is generally merely asserted on European knowledge. According to the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein: 'It has been argued that social science expresses its Eurocentrism in 1) historiography, 2) the parochiality of its universalism, 3) its assumption about (Western) civilisation, 4) its Orientalism and ultimately its attempt to impose a theory of progress.'

In her work, Verdier challenges and deconstructs the universalisation of Eurocentric models by re-appropriating mass media culture code and convention. She also creates her own hashtags and designs her own advertising campaigns in an attempt to challenge the norms which are still predominantly controlled by colonial policies. For Ella Shohat and Robert Stam: 'Eurocentric discourse projects a direct historical trajectory leading from classical Greece (created as “pure,” “Western,” and “democratic”) to imperial Rome and the metropolitan capitals of Europe and the US. It renders history as a sequence of empire: Pax Romana, Pax Hispanica, Pax Britannica, Pax Americana. In all cases, Europe, alone and unaided, is seen as the “motors” for progressive historical change: it invents class society, feudalism, capitalism, the industrial revolution.”

The artist tries to deconstruct Eurocentric psychology in order to abolish racial stereotypes, colonial discourse, fetishism and racism. Or in other terms, the conviction that any race, in Aimé Césaire’s words, “holds a monopoly on beauty, intelligence, and strength.” She listens, assembles intimate notes, conducts interviews and collects private audio/video recordings and archives, in an attempt to emphasise the black and brown bodies’ voices in public spaces which are too often ignored, silenced and forgotten. Verdier uses art as a demonstration against European narcissism, colonial privileges and oppression.

Clara Verdier was born and raised in the suburbs of Paris, France. She is also of Caribbean descent and her parents are both from Martinique (a French-administered territory). Clara honours and cherishes particularly her Creole/Kréyol heritage. Irrefutably, her Kréyol legacy has a definite influence on her practice in many different aspects: historical, sociological, political and spiritual.