Adler Guerrier

Untitled (Flâneur … adrifts in … l’imaginaire de [s]on lieu), 2025. Pigment prints and wall paint.

Shown in ECHO DELAY REVERB : American Art, Francophone thought, Palais de Tokyo, 102225 – 021526.

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The practice of Haitian photographer Adler Guerrier examines how geographic environments and their histories are in relation to identity formations. The series Untitled (Flâneur), begun in 1999, consists of documentation of his wanderings around the peripheral spaces of New York and Miami, his discrete silhouette at times blending into the cityscapes. Though the Baudelairian figure of the flâneur as well as the Situationist practice of the dérive are channeled here, the series also brings to mind Edouard Glissant’s reflections on the way in which the errance and movement characteristic of Caribbean history have enabled its peoples to avoid fixed and totalising identities. The nocturnal photographs from the series Wander and Errancies (2021) evoke the journeys of fugitives  that not only travelled to North but also South to Florida, Mexico and Cuba. In this context, the presence of oranges—a fruit that only grows beneath a certain latitude—were symbols of promise and freedom. Images from these two series are brought together here in a new ensemble devised for the exhibition. They are complemented by a wall painting that reproduces some of the  common colours used to paint family homes in South Florida, in a simple, vernacular practice through which people seek to appropriate and contribute to their environments.