Ming Smith at Centre Pompidou

Ming Smith is part of “Paris Noir – Artistic circulation and anti-colonial resistance, 1950 – 2000” at Centre Pompidou from March 19, 2025.

From the creation of the Présence Africaine review to that of Revue noire, “Black Paris” retraces the presence and influence of Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000. The exhibition celebrates 150 artists coming from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, whose works have often never been displayed in France before.

“Black Paris” offers a vibrant immersion in a cosmopolitan Paris, a place of resistance  and creation that gave rise to a wide variety of practices, from a new awareness of identity  to the search for trans-cultural artistic languages. From international to Afro-Atlantic abstractions via surrealism and free figuration, this historical voyage reveals the importance of artists  of African descent in the redefinition of Modernisms and Post-modernisms.

Ph. Ming Smith, Self-portrait as Josephine, New York [Autoportrait en Joséphine, New York], 1986. Impression pigmentaire d’archivage, 91,4 × 62,9 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Jenkins Johnson, Gallery New York and San Francisco