Pawòl Tras marks Antoine Nabajoth’s return to Martinique on the occasion of his 40th anniversary, in a powerful, visceral exhibition at the Fondation Clément. From his earliest works inspired by the rural world of Guadeloupe to his most recent compositions, the painter and visual artist literally places his body and his memory on canvas. An encounter with an artist inhabited, rooted and traversed by history.
Painting as living memory
Pawòl Tras — which could be translated as “Words from the Traces” — takes its name from the exhibition Pawòl an Kann (Words in the Cane Fields), presented earlier this year at the Mémorial ACTe. In it, Antoine Nabajoth explored sugarcane fields, Jadin Kreyol ( Creole gardens), cases gadè zafè (traditional Creole houses inhabited by guardians of ancestral wisdom) – but above all the sounds, voices and memories heard in these places, the murmurs of the earth and the silences of the elders.
“What I heard in the sugar cane fields, in my parents’ store… It all became a trace. A trace of my parents’ suffering, a trace of my parents’ joy, a trace of my parents’ happiness. And I found myself, my physical person, in the middle of it all.”
Hence the title TRAS (trace) for this exhibition.
His artistic work does not seek to recreate. It embodies. It transpires. It is matter and memory in equal measure.
Between spirituality and territory
In his words as in his works, Antoine Nabajoth speaks in Creole of the inseparable link between himself and his paintings:
“Sé nombrik an mwen ke an mèt asou sé tablo la.“
Literally: “These are my entrails that I put on the canvas”.
What he paints is not just a landscape. It’s his sweat, his body, his entrails. Each canvas becomes a place of passage between the individual and the collective, between intimate memory and Guadeloupean heritage.
This quasi-spiritual relationship is also reflected in the symbolism of Cases Kadé Zafè – Creole houses inhabited by figures of wisdom and watchfulness, sometimes akin to gadè zafè, observers of the visible and invisible. Through his paintings, Antoine Nabajoth himself becomes a guardian of memory, a transmitter of buried stories. This watchman posture is fully expressed in Pawòl Tras, where each painting seems to be a ritual of transmission.
40 years of rigor, passion... and patience
When asked what he would say to a young person wanting to take up painting, his answer is clear:
“It’s the work, the rigor, the passion… You have to let time do the work. You can’t be in a hurry.”
Far from the effects of fashion, Antoine Nabajoth builds a deeply rooted body of work, nourished by observation, slowness and a love of detail. He paints with a trowel, a knife, a fork, with everything the hand can transform into an extension of the soul. Pawòl Tras is both the culmination of this journey and a new breath, a silent cry offered to Creole memory.
An exhibition to discover at the Fondation Clément
Through Pawòl Tras, an entire Creole cosmology is invited into the walls of the Fondation Clément. Each painting is an echo, a trace, a fragment of a collective memory that refuses to be silenced.
📍 Exhibition: Pawòl Tras
📅 24.04.2025 to 15.06.2025
📌 Fondation Clément, Le François – Martinique
