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It is nowhere written that Tsuki Garbian wanted in this series to denounce the increase in racist acts in the United States. Two elements, however, suggest that in a secret way, in the depths of his unconscious, images resurface. This terribly disturbing night vision concerns the Klan, a supremacist organization, whose importance has only grown during the presidency of Donald Trump.
The series in question here concerns small format paintings which are inspired by a book, brought back from a stay in the United States. Tsuki Garbian makes it a sort of family album. Most of the scenes are innocuous. They feature elderly couples and families at friendly parties and professional cocktails. Nothing remarkable, until the silhouette of a man in a white cape slips into the “album”. With his hood on his shoulders, he shows affection to his child. The resemblance to the KKK outfit is obvious. Tsuki gives him a very significant mark of parental tenderness. This man who belongs to a racist sect, prone to the worst abuses, this guy is a remarkable father and a loving and uneventful husband.
“The photographs I chose were representations of friendship, family, strangeness, and illusion,” he says.
According to several studies, the number of local militias and groups inciting hatred against black, Hispanic, Jewish or Muslim, and homosexual minorities has continued to grow since 2015. At that time, the group had some 8,000 members, belonging to all socio-professional categories, “but mostly white, from the least educated fringe, the one who loudly supports Trump. » (Mark Potok, report on political violence in the USA).
Coming back to this “family box set”, Tsuki Garbian made it at a particular moment. His reflections as a painter already concern the hidden side of our lives. In short, what is behind the person and the painting simultaneously.
At the same time, he began working on his large charcoal drawings called “Pentimento”. As a reminder, these are these “repentances”, hidden versions of a painting, from the Renaissance period. These sketches were abandoned in the thickness of the canvas. They therefore nourished the final evolution, but they no longer appear. This is the second clue that suggests that the series “America”, with its KKK figures, is not accidental.
Outwardly, nothing betrays them. They look happy. They hold children in their arms and eat in the shade of large trees. Tsuki Garbian paints them in this carefree way. Families without history, it should be noted, are white and respectable. The painter shows them in the same way as a Polaroid. In the hypnotic banality of the family moment, a monster hides.
Roger Calmé (ZO mag’)
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