‚Zansèt Yo‘ is Haitian Kreyol and means ‚The Ancestors‘, a title that signals the cultural wellspring from which artist M. Florine Démosthène draws strength. Here, and by extension in West African spiritual practices, as evidenced by her evocative modern-day shrines and the inclusion of votive figures in her collages. Twinning and doubling of the figures in her works in ‚Zansèt Yo‘ are referential to the Haitian Vodou concept of sacred Marasa, sacred twins related to the Ibeji twins in Yoruba beliefs. These pluralities are guardians of liminal spaces where the world above meets the world below.
In her own words, Démosthène reflects on this focus: ‚The use of repeated figures in my work refers to the reverence of twins in West Africa and Haïti. Twins are thought to serve as intermediaries, straddling the mundane and the spiritual. Their position is traditionally ambiguous and paradoxical-two occupying one space, same but different, of this world and, yet again, not. I embrace this concept in my exploration of love, conveying that as humans we are both knowable and unknowable, to both ourselves and others.’
Within this exploration of the known and unknown and everything that lies beyond, for Démosthène the body becomes a site of transformation and cosmic connection: ‚I express the idea that we as human beings contain multitudes. My use of ink, glitter and pigment, form figures that are at once earthly, yet suggestive of the cosmos. As my voluptuous figures meld, embrace and engage with one another, the familiar form of my own body becomes enveloped with multiple repeating bodies-in some cases seemingly caught in a struggle, or so close they become one. The fluid and fleshy bodies shift and transform, never alone, they hold space, they wash over, they embrace, they give life, and they tear apart.’
M. Florine Démosthène’s work underscores the body as both subject and vessel: a site where histories converge, where spiritual and material realms meet, and where multiplicity gives rise to new forms of knowledge and being.
M. Florine Démosthène was born in the United States and raised between Port-au-Prince, Haiti and New York. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in New York and her Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College-City University of New York.
Démosthène has exhibited extensively through group and solo exhibitions in the United States, Caribbean, UK, Europe, and Africa, with recent solo shows including, What The Body Carries at Frist Art Museum, Mastering the Dream at SCAD Museum of Art and In The Realm Of Love at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery.
She is a recipient of a NYFA Artist Fellowship, Wachtmeister Award, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Arts Moves Africa Grant, Black Star Award and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. She has participated in artist residencies in the United States, Caribbean, UK, Slovakia, Ghana and Tanzania.
Her works are on view at National Museum For African American History and Culture, Africa First Collection, University of South Africa (UNISA), Lowe Museum of Art, Hessler Museum of Art, PFF Collection of African American Art and in various private collections worldwide.