Francoise Duresse

Francoise Duresse is a Jamaican- Haitian artist that deals mainly with printmaking and making collages. Her work is very interesting because it has a lot to do with the racial tensions that she herself has had to deal with during her own life.  these include accepting ridicule from her grandmother up to this very day for being too dark and not looking white enough for her liking, even though she herself is black. Also it deals with some of the racial profiling that she has see throughout the world, like the black lunch counters of the 50s and the black seats on the buses in that time also.
It was very interesting to listen to her talk about the work that she has developed because she likes to put herself in the pieces as a caricature, Queen Nappy. She sees this character as a strong, independent woman that lives in a world that does not have racial tensions or anything like that. I think that this is a really big step in the art world today because, even though racial profiling is not as prevalent in our society, it is still there, and still a problem.

I think that her pieces are really nice due to the fact that they also capture her heritage in them as well. I appreciate that she used her grandmothers drawings in many of her new works, and it trying to interpret what the drawings are, even after her grandmother is dead. I think that that is a really sweet gesture and in a whole, continues the narration of her grandmother even in the afterlife.
Many of her works give off the appearance of creepy I think because many of them have a lot of things that repeat over and over again, and I just don't like looking at those sorts of things. It makes me uncomfortable. Which I guess is good considering her intention for the pieces. I think that they truly make others think about what is good and what is bad in this world because of the different colors, all similar to a paper bag. This is because she found an old tradition of measuring people by the color of their skin, which is not new to us, but it a new way that I have never heard of. This was by comparing them to a paper bag. If they were lighter, they could go where they wanted to go. If they were darker, they were considered to black to be in the social eye, and if they matched the bag, they were treated the same as the white people.  It think that this is a horrible, yet true thing that has happened in our world,and it is unfortunate that we judge people by the amount of melanin in their
 skin.

I think that it is very brave of her to do this experiment because it is more of a social experiment then it is a artistic one. It really makes the viewer uncomfortable when they look at it, especially after knowing the behind story of all of the pieces. I think that in a whole this is a really beautiful piece because it carries its own connotations of right and wrong, and it tells the story of history from a different view than what we are used to. The images are disturbing enough to make a person want to change, as well as make them think about other stories other than their own. I think that she is a very groundbreaking artist because she has now opened the door, even wider, to art that comments on how or society works, and why many things are wrong, but they are the things the people think we need to make the world go around.