POP Montreal highlights 18th-century black slave's story in commissioned artwork

Who says you can't party and learn a thing or two about slave history in your 375-year-old city?

Not Pop Montreal.

The Sweet 16 edition of the "all things independent in the arts" festival is underway.

This Saturday at noon, POP and Greenland are hosting a free barbecue with live performances as part of the city's official 375th programming.

Just as exciting as the line-up is the story behind the artwork on the poster and billboards advertising the event all around town.

For the past three weeks, as I travelled on the Orange and Green Metro lines, my brow furrowed and I got my back up, every time I saw this drawing of a black, possibly African woman, stoic expression on her face, wearing a head wrap and draped by a cloth, African tribal art on her face and arms.

What seemed at the time like a random and stereotypical image of African culture, a growling tiger, is included in the puzzling portrait.

What was the connection with POP Montreal?  

I worried that this was a sloppy do-over by Montreal's 375th programming committee, after last spring's lack-of-diversity video fiasco.

I never got up close enough to any of the billboards to see the name of the woman who the ad was meant to be representing: Marie-Joseph Angélique, circa 1734.

Thankfully, POP asked the Montreal-based street artist it commissioned to create this work, Miss Me, to write a blog post explaining the story behind her artwork.

"We think this should be a part of the conversation about what exactly we're celebrating, what exactly we're remembering," said Tao Fe, Pop Montreal's executive producer.

"Women of colour, histories of slavery, histories of resistance: these are also important things to celebrate, if we are doing any celebrating at all this year."

• Montreal artist Miss Me takes powerful images of women to the street

When Fe and the festival's team was approached to produce an official 375th event and was given the choice of artist, they knew they wanted to make clear that the Montreal they celebrate is ideologically, and in real life, all about diversity.  

The team is not all white, the artists are definitely not all white, nor are the thousands of people who come out to experience the full POP experience.

Angélique was chosen because both Fe and Miss Me had her story in their recent memory.

Both women had questioned why they hadn't known about the history of slavery in Montreal and Quebec.

They were both profoundly changed by the story of this 18th-century slave woman who, after attempting to escape bondage with the help of her white, French lover, was tortured and hanged for allegedly setting a fire that burned down her master's residence, as well a big part of Old Montreal.  

As the story goes, she always proclaimed her innocence and never gave up the name of her lover, who the judges believed had set the fire with her.

"Two hundred years of slavery is not a small detail: people owned people here, that's not a detail. And she was part of that," Miss Me said, explaining why she values Angélique's story.

"She was everything that holds you down, and she didn't let that hold her down. She fled and she went for freedom and didn't let the system oppress her, just because it was legal."

"I find her story inspirational, even though it ends in a sad way."

Representing black bodies

It wasn't surprising to learn that Miss Me created the piece.

Her work has consistently been about celebrating historical figures she finds inspiring, who've contributed to changing the world for the better: some artists, some activists, mostly women and many, many of them black.

As a Jewish woman of European origin, Miss Me is fully aware that she's wading into delicate areas when she draws black bodies in her work. Her work could easily bring up debates around stereotypes, exoticizing or fetishizing, that create an image that reduces black bodies to a monolith.

Part of her motivation for drawing black women, is that she thinks black women are continuously objectified, both historically and today.

"Especially in North America, in a way that is more than white woman and a lot of other ethnicities," she said.

It's obvious to me that Miss Me has been reflecting on this and has a full-on position, and as a black woman myself, that's encouraging.

"I'm always hoping the respect I have for [black women] is understood, because sometimes you have an intent, and it doesn't come out the way you thought. There are a lot of women out there who inspire me, and a lot of them are black women, because on top of it they come from an oppression that is inspiring on its own."

Another detail in Miss Me's homage to Angélique is the caution she took, asking a friend to pose as the 18th-century slave.

Without photographs or many visual references, the street artist borrowed from the French tradition of representing Marianne, the symbol of the Republic, with the faces of famous French women.  

In portraying one of the most resilient black women in Montreal's history, her friend stands in for all black women of Montreal, who, in turn, all represent Angélique.

Missing piece

What most Montrealers have been seeing on the billboards on the Metro is not the original work.

Miss Me had written the phrase "Je Me Souviens, 1734" across her depiction of Angélique's body — a statement about the collective history of the province.  

The decision not to include it in the branded event poster was about being pragmatic, Fe explained.  

However, it was important to the festival that Miss Me's original work be seen, so it is the focal piece in one of their conference rooms where they host artists panels and workshops.

Of course, it is now a part of Miss Me's series, and without much doubt, she will paste it up in the least expected locations around town.

Saturday's free barbecue at The Schoolyard at POP Montreal's headquarters is already designed to be special: Hometown hero Kid Koala is bringing his latest Vaudevillian turntable set; ultra-creative musician and performer Klô Pelgag is set to play, alongside Montreal hip-hop veterans Shades of Culture and Toronto-based, dancehall-inspired, electronic music duo Bonjay, to name a few.  

And the thoughtful artwork promoting the event was, for me, one of the most effective ways of bringing to the fore the hard-but-inspiring history of one of the first black Montreal women.