PRIMITIF
PRIMITIF 2.4 (2024)
60 x 50 cm – 23 x 20 inches
Oil on canvas, Bruges lace, antique banner, beads, sequins, silk, wool, and cotton.
“Lafleur ships his canvases from Port-au-Prince to Budapest, where Bogaert sources antique church banners and tapestries, excising the Virgin Marys and child Christs and inserting Lafleur’s self-portraits and Black Madonnas. Primitif 2.5 (2024) stands out: Bogaert allowed fruit, furniture, and part of a Madonna’s hand to remain “in the picture.” Replacing hallowed European religious figures with contemporary African and Haitian personages seems to recover psychic territory and time from slave-economy history, not in combative terms but inch by meticulous inch.
Bogaert travels with the art to his native town of Bruges to outfit and finish framing Lafleur’s images with the help of Inge De Zutter and Paula Devriendt. They collaborate on color choice and subtle transitions between lace, sequin, silk, bead, rug-hooking, tassel, fringe, gimping, and machine stitching. The surrounding textile’s interplay of textures and range of faded antique to modern colors spotlight Lafleur’s restrained, flat painting. The “Primitif” series recalls Margaret van Eyck, picturing her ceremoniously replaced by an anonymous Black woman similarly posed.”
Elizabeth Johnson in the Brooklyn Rail - November 2025.
PRIMITIF 2.1 (2024)
60 x 53 cm – 23 x 21 inches
Oil on canvas, Bruges lace, antique banner, beads, sequins, silk, wool, and cotton.