The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum will kick off the Fall 2020 season with a solo exhibition by M. Florine Démosthène, entitled Always in All Ways. The exhibition will include twelve new mixed media works on paper and new sculptures. Through Always in All Ways Démosthène continues to investigate the conflict between the traditional, ethereal, western, and contemporary ideas of love. This exploration was, in part, informed by Démosthène’s time spent living in Accra, Ghana. These new works reflect a personal contemplation of what it means to embody the concept of “love.”

She utilizes collage, ink, pigment stick, and glitter to create voluptuous bodies which embrace and engage with each other while appearing to float against a white backdrop. The lush surfaces conjure images of celestial bodies and other worlds, while the figures divulge sensuous curves and limbs that have ambiguous beginnings and endings.
Démosthène has more recently incorporated three-dimensional elements into her practice. Her installations include sculptures that reference shrinal objects of the Fon (Bénin) and the Aŋlɔ Eʋeawó people of Ghana), figures that are also present throughout the works on paper. These are paired with other objects that serve as “quasi-divination tools.” Shown together, the viewer is left to consider a more expansive view of “love,” one that is once human and bodily, mystical, or spiritual.

About the Artist:
Florine Démosthène, who was born in the United States and raised between Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and New York, is the recipient of a Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Arts Moves Africa Grant, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. She has presented her work extensively through group and solo exhibitions in the U.S., Caribbean, UK, Europe, and Africa. Her work can be seen in the National Museum For African American History and Culture, the Africa First collection, the University of South Africa (UNISA), the University of Miami Lowe Museum of Art, Hessler Museum of Art, PFF Collection of African American Art and in various private collections worldwide. Démosthène is participating in the Dak'art Biennale 2022.

This program is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and a grant from the Dr. JoAnn Crisp-Ellert Fund at The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida.