Nic[o] Brierre Aziz

Nic[o] Brierre Aziz

Maroon, Mawòn (2 Sides II A Book)
2023
Diptych, collage; graduation tassel fibers, cowrie shells, Dogon Tribe beads, and silkscreen on American Target Company shooting range target posters, colonial maple pine Courtesy of the artist
48 x 24 in. each

Depending on which of history’s sides you resonate with most, “maroon” as we know it today has French and/or Taino roots. According to one book, the word comes from the French “marron” which meant “feral” or “fugitive.” Another book would state that maroon as we know it originates with the Spanish “cimarrón”, via the Taino people, meaning “untamed.” This layered multiplicity is a microcosm of the construct of Blackness—especially within a country such as the United States. When I hear the word maroon, I think of enslaved people who escaped and liberated themselves to establish their own communities in countries such as Haiti, Brazil, Jamaica, and the United States. This term and color, which has these varied meanings and relationships to “freedom,” instantly came to mind when I familiarized myself with Jy’Harin’s story. With that, I intended to create a piece influenced by some of his specific feelings and desires—his love of football, his desire to go to college and be an air traffic controller, his 8 sisters. I also sought to illuminate the Black body, expression, and image’s relationship to aspiration, captivity, control, and capitalism. In 2019, I found and purchased these original arrest reports featuring Black men from the 1930s-1960s, and their eyes were, ironically and eerily, listed as maroon. The composition of these arrest reports juxtaposed with Black men from Morehouse College from the same time period, all screen printed onto a Black body silhouette produced by the American Target Company, intend to question the ways we might continue to be “targets” in our respective quests for liberation. The presence of elements such as the Dogon tribe beads, the cowrie shells, and the loosely strung Black and Maroon fibers within the Colonial Maple Pinewood frame additionally reference the fortitude and eternality of African aesthetics along with the tensions that those of the diaspora must navigate within an imperialist-based world.

This work creatively reinterprets the experience of Jy’Harin and was commissioned by the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University for the exhibition Unthinkable Imagination: A Creative Response to the Juvenile Justice Crisis which was on view January through June 2023.

RAFTERS (Hyppolite + Gilbert)
2021
Tattered New Orleans Saints jerseys, sugar cane, sugar cane leaves, brown cotton, white cotton, indigo, transatlantic slave trade shackles, machete, plexiglass vitrine display case, “Colonial Maple” wooden base.

Through the remixing of an NFL Hall of Fame case and the visual language associated with these types of displays, this selection of jerseys from my RAFTERS series seeks to interrogate “value” and “acclaim” as constructs in an effort to spark reflection and discussion around the ways that Black bodies have been the most utilized colonial capitalist tool within Western culture and consciousness. I also seek to use these jerseys and this series to increase dialogue regarding the underdiscussed history of the 1811 German Coast Uprising while additionally illuminating the fleur-de-lis’ brutal period of being branded onto the bodies of runaway enslaved Africans. In addition to this indisputably being our city’s most prominent symbol, the simple fact that we have an entire football team of almost all Black players wearing this symbol on the same position of their bodies as their enslaved ancestors who could have been branded with it is devastatingly eerie.

Strange Brute (Hanging From the Poplar Trees) II
Tree, Allard Plantation, [Black] Artist/Activist, P.G.T. Beauregard piñata, Robert E. Lee piñata, Vintage American Baseball Bat, Haitian Flag, Burned Confederate Flag, Bench
2022
40x60in
Archival Print
From the Juguete Series
Edition of 12

Nic[o] Brierre Aziz is a Haitian-New Orleanian interdisciplinary artist and curator born and raised in New Orleans, LA. His work is very centered around the Caribbean Diaspora and he is very interested in Blackness as an experience, construct, and capitalist tool. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehouse College, a Master of Science degree from The University of Manchester (UK), and will be pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in Sculpture from the Yale University School of Art starting in Fall 2023.