CANDIDA ROMERO – ON THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF JAMES BALDWIN

Candida Romero is a French–Puerto Rican artist whose work combines painting, photography and text to reinterpret literary and historical narratives. Her most recent project pays tribute to James Baldwin, a close friend of her father and African American writer, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth.

Baldwin is the author of the essay Stranger in the Village, written after a stay in Leukerbad in 1951. A decade later, director Pierre Koralnik shot the documentary Un étranger dans le village in Leukerbad with James Baldwin’s analysis of ordinary and universal racism.

Candida Romero’s mirror works are not portraits in the traditional sense. They are confrontations, composite images where reflection, memory, and responsibility intersect.

From 8 to 17 August, a selection of Candida Romero’s works will be on show in the foyer of Fondation Opale, echoing her conference.

Each piece in the series presents two to four laser-printed photographs of James Baldwin, overlaid with Romero’s handwritten excerpts from Notes of a Native Son, which flow like liquid traces, like an overflowing memory. These portraits are mounted on a mirrored background, just four millimeters from the glass, creating a fine line of reflection. The viewer, looking at Baldwin, also sees his/her own reflection: they are included in the frame.

Conference in collaboration with Swiss Made Culture

Candida Romero will be in dialogue with Céline Eidenbenz, curator of the 2023 exhibition Stranger in the Village at the Aargauer Kunsthaus.

CHF 10.– per person
Booking required via Swiss Made Culture at event@swissmadeculture.ch

Photo credit: © Francesco Adolfo