Maksaens Denis

Lecture Abstract:
Through a presentation accompanied by photos of my installations and excerpts of videos that I have made I will explain my personal relationship with each of these themes and explain how they fit in a recurring way in my work, individually or mixed together. I will also talk about the aesthetics adopted to treat these different themes during my more than 20 years of career.

Workshop Abstract:
For the workshop a small group of students will be asked to explore the forms of injustices that affect them personally and/or particularly and to think about the type of creative activity in art or medium (or combination) that would reflect the feeling they want to express.

Biography:
Maksaens Denis is a multimedia artist from Haiti who divides his time between Port-au-Prince, the Dominican Republic, and Paris. He is also a dj and vj who comes from a classical music background. Appropriately, what might first appear to be unwieldy about his work has the exactitude of classical composition.

Like most popular forms in the Caribbean, Denis’s artwork maintains a political consciousness while weaving together spiritual affirmation and visual poetics in playful and seductive ways. In their video installations and performances, Denis juxtaposes a range of images—scenes from daily life and religious ceremonies, digital animations, video clips of the landscape, Vodou symbols—alongside improvised soundtracks, to communicate associatively, to create an experience. His work has been shown all over the world, including the Caribbean Undercurrents exhibition. Known for his artistic video practice, Maksaens Denis is a visionary pioneer of the moving image, whose influence has global resonance. Here is a link to his website: https://www.maksaens-denis.com

Sponsors: Both events are possible thanks to the generous financial support of the Anonymous Fund. The Center for Visual Cultures would also like to thank the departments of Art, Art History, English, French and Italian, Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, LACIS, Spanish and Portuguese.