A Taste for Critique: A Poetics of Attention

Kessie Theliar-Charles is an artist-researcher concerned with the preservation and dissemination of the heritage of Afro-descendant visual artists. As part of this residency in partnership with Art Volt, she proposes a reflection on the social role of art criticism and the importance of the archival dimension of writing.


I am not an art critic, but I can discern its forms, functions, and possibilities. I sense a writing style that can reveal itself as poetic, fluid, contradictory, sometimes simple or complex, with words unfolding in a variety of tones and rhythms. The writing can be inquisitive and considerate, but also dreaded if perceived solely as an act of judgment and assessment. We don’t grant it nearly enough of its underlying relationality.  

In Montréal, where the past of artists from Haitian, Caribbean, and Black communities remains fragmented and under-documented, thinking and writing about art always takes me in their direction. My interest in the recovery, conservation, and dissemination of narratives from the margins has led me to consider art criticism in other ways. For whom do we write and to what end? My writing is conditioned by this question and leads me to examine the rarity of critical Black voices who write about art, as well as the limited production of critical texts dedicated to the art practices of Black artists.