UTÊ PETIT

LusaHumma : Land Of The Black Red

Curated by Anne-Laure Lemaitre

November 18th - December 23rd 2023

Swivel Gallery is thrilled to present Louisiana based Utē Petit's first solo show in New York City, opening on November 18th, composed of drawings, sculptures, quilts and installation works.

The method by which we currently communally index the world originates from a eurocentric predetermined perspective birthed in colonialism. It negates the innite relationships humans have been developing with their surroundings and the boundless ways we may have spiritually connected to nature, space and time over millennia. While a monolithic frame of reference may somewhat allow for a broader understanding between cultures, it has too often been implemented through the brutal annihilation of any perceived ‘otherness’. So many means of living and experiencing have been all but eradicated; seen as pagan, immoral, heretic, awed. Yet, despite the systematic methods of erasure used in modern occidental societies to do away with any dierence considered too fringe, some deeply-seated bonds are too profound to uproot.

In “LusaHumma: Land of the Black Red”, Utē Petit’s first solo presentation, a territory where Black and Indigenous communities reclaim their connection to the magical essence of a land in its wild and natural state arises from hidden, whispered dimensions.

Reinventing a physical enclave inside Ailantha, straddling the Misi-Ziibi river and its adjoining wetlands and inhabited by her people, Utē voices into existence a reality in which intentional stewardship, reverence for native species and unbridled harmony with one’s surroundings are intrinsic to life. Wounded animals and humans embrace in deep sorrow; the separation and sheltering we so often seek from the elements and the articial boundaries we create between species, spaces and beings crumble; the concept of home broadens to encompass limitless landscapes; signs from dreamed territories become tangible markings.

Utē’s works possess an incandescent force and evocative power that seeps into the most hidden corners of one’s soul to eat alive at its certitudes. Under her hand, drawings, quilts and sculptures redene the world anew. Their unequivocal presence challenges societal constructs too awry to resist her acute scrutiny. But this narrative goes beyond folklore, storytelling or worldbuilding, it is, in fact, uncompromising resistance. It’s survival; giving space for bold, raw, real, carnal, at times violent pieces of a repressed reality to exist for all to see. The artist’s carefully crafted vernacular and thorough historical review speaks into existence a secular bond centuries of oppression have tried to decimate, suppress and erase.

LusaHumma is relentless and at times uncomfortable. It’s the manifestation of a primal force of life that will remain beyond western society’s best efforts to negate and expunge its very substance. Utē Petit’s practice balances in equilibrium the longing she has for an ancestral world she knows exists under endless layers of historical eradication and coercion, the urge to manifest its innite beauty and sheer existence, and her will to voice the endless violence eating away at her people, exiled from their now unspoken primal refuge. And it’s at the nucleus of this tenuous alloy of intense, conicting, vital impulses that resides the blunt true soul of LusaHumma. LusaHumma is a spirit, an identity but also a rebellion; the incarnation of a borderless nation far too powerful to bow into silent submission.

Utē Petit (b. 1995, Southfield, Michigan) is a New Orleans-based artist whose work explores Black-Indigenous land-based traditions and the creation of 'Ailanthaland,' a free Black nation of heavenly beings conceptualized using charcoal and graphite drawings, quilts, installations, farming, and cooking. Utē specializes in textile practices, incorporating woven, quilted, and hand-printed fabrics, along with drawing, painting, and collage. Her practice partners with the Earth, incorporating land stewardship into the process. Utē's ancestry as a quilter, educator, and farmer informs her work, as does her upbringing on farms across the globe.
She is currently stewarding her great-grandmother's and three neighbors' lots in New Orleans as part of her quest to repatriate family land stolen by the state of Louisiana. Through her work, Utē seeks to represent a nation divested from white-imposed societal constructs and committed to the self-determination of all beings.
She was the winner of the third annual Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists (2022) and recipient of the Marsha P. Johnson Starlight Fellowship (2023). She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence) in 2018. Her work has been included in exhibitions at New Orleans African American Museum (New Orleans), Oakland Avenue Urban Farm (Detroit), and Library Street Collective (Detroit). Loyal Gallery, Swivel Gallery.