Tea Céline, Schloß-Wolfsburg (Foto:Claudia Mucha)
Tea Céline

Tea Celine

Thé Céline

Original French (utilized)

"Toutes les femmes se perdent avec des negres"   "Ce qui nous gêne le plus dans les Juifs, quand on examine la situation, c'est leur arrogance, leur revendicarisme, leur perpétuelle martyrologo-dervicherie, leur tam-tam. En Afrique, chez les mêmes nègres, ou leurs cousins au Cameroun, j'ai vécu des années seul, dans un de leurs villages, en pleine forêt, sous la même paillote, à la même calebasse. En Afrique, c'étaient des braves gens. Ici, ils me gênent, ils m'écoeurent. Ils ne devenaient tout à fait insupportables au Cameroun, qu'au moment de la pleine lune, ils devenaient torturants avec leur tam-tam... [...] Mais les autres nuits, ils vous laissaient roupiller bien tranquille, en toute sécurité. Je parle du pays 'pahoi', le plus nègre pays de nègres. Nègres pour nègres, je préfère les anthropophages... et puis pas ici... chez eux... Au fond, c'est le seul dommage qu'ils me causent, un dommage esthétique, je n'aime pas le tam-tam"   "Quand tout sera plus que décombres, le nègre surgira, ça sera son heure, ça sera son tour, peut-être avec le tartare. Le nègre le vrai papa du juif, qu'a un membre encore bien plus gros, qu'est le seul qui s'impose en fin de compte tout au bout des décadences. Y a qu'à voir un peu nos mignonnes, comment qu'elles se tiennent, qu'elles passent déjà du youtre au nègre, mutines, coquines, averties d'ondes..." 

(Deutsch uberstezung von Joachim Hausknecht)

“Alle Frauen schmeißen sich den Negern an den Hals…"   "Was uns bei genauer Betrachtung am meisten an den Juden stört ist ihre Arroganz, ihr forderndes Auftreten, ihr beständiges, märtyrerhaftes Dervischtum, ihr ganzes Tamtam. In Afrika bei eben diesen Negern, oder eben ihren Cousins in Kamerun, habe ich ganze Jahre allein in einem ihrer Dörfer zugebracht, mitten im Wald, unter dem gleichen Strohdach sitzend und aus der gleichen Kalebasse trinkend. In Afrika sind das vernünftige Leute. Hier aber stören sie mich, machen sie mich krank. In Kamerun waren sie lediglich bei Vollmond schwer zu ertragen, wenn sie mich mit ihren Tam-Tam-Trommeln regelrecht folterten… (…) In den übrigen Nächten hingegen haben sie mich in aller Ruhe und Sicherheit schnarchen lassen. Ich rede hier vom Land der “Pahoi”, dem schwärzesten aller Negerländer. Von allen Negern sind mir die Kannibalen die liebsten… und natürlich nicht hier…. sondern wenn sie zu Hause bleiben…. Letztlich ist alles, was sie mir antun, eine Beleidigung meines Sinns für Ästhetik – ich kann ihr Tamtam einfach nicht ausstehen.”   “Wenn schließlich alles zuschanden geht wird die Stunde des Negers gekommen sein, er wird sich, vielleicht noch im Bunde mit dem Tartaren, erheben. – Der Neger, der wahre Vater des Juden, nur daß sein Glied noch größer ist, wird sich als einziger endlich durchsetzen am Ende aller Dekadenz. Man muß sich nur einmal unsere Weibsbilder anschauen, wie sie schon ganz still und kokett vom Judenschwein (youtre) zum Neger überlaufen, sich völlig der Ausstrahlung bewußt.”

Material & Format:

Glazed Porcelain with blue over-glazed texts (Louis-Ferdinand Céline citations in consultation with French literature scholar Prof.Thomas C. Spear, CUNY)

Jean-Ulrick Désert CONSPICUOUS INVISIBILITY

WORKS 1997–2023

Jean-Ulrick Désert is the inaugural recipient of Wi Di Mimba Wi :: The AKB & SAVVY Contemporary Commission Prize. 

Silence Will Not Protect You

Originally commissioned for Volume IV of Unfinished Histories at the Klosterruine in Berlin–Mitte, curated by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. The initial floor installation consisted of 33 fine grain concrete birds laid to rest upon concrete/beton blocks...

Neque mittatis margaritas vestras ante porcos

do not cast pearls before swine

In this work, Désert teases the above mentioned excerpt from Matthew 7:6 and renders it in the form of festoons draped across the room. The texts, exhibited in Kreyol, Papiamento, Spanish, Sranan Tongo, and Patois, sit underneath balloons which characterise the pearls we are warned of wasting on undeserving recipients.

Terra Nova Afrikæ 新非洲

Commissioned for the exhibition THE INCANTATION OF THE DISQUIETING MUSE by Savvy Contemporary (Berlin)...

ABC's of my Private Life

L’ABCdaire de ma vie privée

In four pages, Jean-Ulrick Désert revisits the four places that shaped his personal experience: Port-au-Prince, Brooklyn, Paris, and Berlin...

Tante Cilet

How Nannite became Aunt Cilet (2015)

The shared phenomena of archiving and recycling photographic memories through family albums remains a critical point of cohesion for the Haitian diaspora...

Belgian Soliloquy

Belgian Soliloquy was developed for the Special Art-Project space PLATFORM 102 In Brussels (Belgium)...

Amour Colère Folie

(Love Anger Madness )- A Temporary Monument to Resistance

A temporary monument to resistance...

Arabesque

The Goddess Temple

An imaginary "ruin" of Josephine Baker's unconstructed Parisian villa of 1928 (by Adolf Loos)...

Secretum

(I am very much in love w/u)

The Latin term Secretum is used to express the idea of a contained or jarred secret...

Blackout

(Papillons)

BlackOut was first created and installed for 3 days in a public square (Richard-Platz, Berlin-Neukölln) in the summer of 2012.

Sky Above Port-au-Prince

Haiti 12 January 2010 21:53 UTC

This artwork reflects the view of the sky above Haiti during the officially recorded time of the 2010 Earthquake.

5:00.12.04.1975.48°51N2°21E

The Goddess Constellations

 A 3-dimensional map of the sky above Paris (48°51N2°21E) marking the hour (5AM) of Josephine Baker's *death on the 12th of April 1975..

Shrine of The Divine Negress No.1

The Goddess Project

Désert’s take on the image of the Black Madonna and the Divine Feminine is expressed with a motif of Josephine Baker...

White Lessons

a series of different art-projects on the theme of Whiteness as a lecture presented at Making Mirrors Conference at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst...

Divine Negress Butterfly Fans

The Goddess Project

1000 hand-fans distributed to the public with the quotation: "A butterfly flapping its wings...can generate a violent storm"-Kofi Annan...

Trophies

Paint-by-number Trophies (2009) 

The statement 'you can be whoever you want to be...Prime-Minister/President, Secretary General, even an Artist'
- often goes unexamined...

Good Morning Prussia

Good Morning Prussia (Guten Morgen Preussen) is a series of handmade cyanotype photographs. It is the story of a “little Nubian boy”, August Sabac el Cher, who was given as a "gift" to a German noble due to his musical talents. 

Voices from the Heart

Urban Grafitti is carefully documented and transcribed onto Gingerbread-cookies...

Leviticus

Works on paper (mixed media and collage) created for the exhibition entitled Demokratie und Gewalt...

The Travel Albums

NH2K

A diary of imaginary postcards with incidental notes recounting the project's journeys and strolls in texts and images collected from the public...

The Passion

The artist focuses on football (soccer) fan-culture eccentricities, typified by extravagant fanaticism and the hooligan subculture..

Postcards From My Loves

NH2K / Billboards

Illuminated billboards digitally printed on textile...

Toiles de Jouy

All projects of the Haitian-American artist Jean-Ulrick Désert tackle the visualization of abstract ideas, such as the complex relations between private and political space...

Codex Testimoniorum Amoris

The Book of the Witnesses of Love

-or- The Collected Accounts of the Emptoris Depicting their Experiences with the Scortæ de Genus Masculus of Landeshaupstadt München including Many Depictions of the Latter Compiled & Annotated for the Moral Education of the Good

The Science of Beauty

The works of The Science of Beauty consists of a series of newly imagined school-charts using transgendered and intersexed bodies from the beauty of nature.

Métamorphoses Sublimes

A video(loop) projection presented in Istanbul (Turkey) of a Belgian woman demonstrating How to construct and wear a modesty Muslim-veil fashionable among the Turkish minority in Germany. 

Jn.Ulrick Désert

Jn.Ulrick Désert

Désert's first German solo-retrospective exhibition entitled and simply abbreviated as Jn.Ulrick Désert presented at the Wolfsburg Castle (Schloßwolfsburg)) by Kunstverein-wolfsburg

Die Hosen 'runter lassen

The Haitian-American artist creatively reacts to Robert Mappelthorpes seminal and highly controversial black & white photograph Man in a Polyester Suit...

Suicidal Meditations

Photo and video-based project..

The Burqa Project

On The Borders Of My Dreams I Encountered My Double's Ghost

Four flags from four leading industrial nations, The United States of America, The United Kingdom/Great Britain, France, Germany, are used as the basis for replicating the Afghanistan hijab known as The Burqa...

Surrender

Surrender comprises of two artworks, originally available as low edition multiples, La Main (The Hand) and Le Chapelet (The Rosary) ...

NH2K

The artist in German Lederhosen constructed of leather resembling caucasian skin and blond hair, was initially deployed as an art-action in multiple European cities...

Bierdeckel

NH2K

A beer coaster created to be distributed and used in public and private venues...

The Hip Decadence of Reductive Glamour

The artist, wearing a light tone foundation make-up as a Caucasian hipster, takes a series of self-portraits using a public photo-booth at the Paris Opera House Metro.