With the Fire on High

The artistic practice of Charles Jean-Pierre is as eclectic as his roots. Of Haitian ancestry, the artist grew up in the south side of Chicago but went on to complete his studies at Howard University in Washington, DC, where he currently resides. A prolific artist and devoted art teacher, Jean-Pierre is known for his numerous murals and public art installations in cities all over the world. He works with a wide range of media, combining figurative and abstract aesthetic languages through carefully structured collages inspired by the cultural life, spiritual practices, and the complex histories of the African diaspora. Contrasting textures and materials, achieved with the use of different artistic techniques, are central elements in the work of this artist, as they allow him to investigate the historical undercurrents of a modern object economy founded in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In With the Fire on High, a piece inspired by Elizabeth Acevedo’s coming of age novel of the same name, a dancing figure wearing a printed dress evokes the passionate and carefree personality of Emoni Santiago, the teenage protagonist and heroine. The culinary culture celebrated in the novel resonates with the painting’s homage to the Caribbean aquatic culture that is often dismissed by racist tropes of the African wilderness and the jungle. The artist’s intentional departure from realism critically examines the relation between image and idea, appearance and meaning. Establishing a parallel with a novel that subverts the reader’s expectations, the painting eschews any defining physical traits to instead privilege the shifting shapes and patterns produced by a body in motion.