Crushed Yams and Pizza!

On the "Global(e) Resistance" exhibit at the Pompidou; Uighur poets exiled abroad; and the death of jazz bassist Gary Peacock

Last week we checked out Global(e) Résistance, an exhibit at the Pompidou Center in Paris that attempts to respond to worldwide protests against racial and social injustice. It showcases more than sixty artists from the “Global South”—including Vietnam, Francophone Africa, South Africa, Palestine, and Japan—and it’s been promoted aggressively around the city. At bus stops and métro entrances, we’ve been seeing a striking poster featuring prints by the Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo, which incise in woodblocks slogans from recent protests: 

NOT IN MY NAME

WE ARE ALL IN EXILE

DON’T SHOOT

TORTURA NUNCA MAS

PLUS JAMAIS ÇA

ASSASSINO 

AM I NEXT? 

Barthélémy Toguo’s slogans exhibited at the Pompidou

The text is plain, stencil-like, all-caps, white against black like chalk on a chalkboard. Unmarked by geographical clues, detached from the people who chanted them, the slogans frame human solidarity as a unified act. Pompidou displays not only the prints but also some of the original wooden stamps,…