Longetti’s first series is On Love. The intention of this publication is to operate in the both simple and complex landscape of love, and to show different perspectives on a theme that is on everyone’s mind in some kind of way. Our three books in this series are about art forms that emanate with love, lost loved ones and about the anxious feeling when you are about to see your loved one. In our books you will find old loves, new loves, revolutionary lovers riding on a motorcycle, the love for detective novels and a bus driver who has devoted her life to the nobel act of riding lovers around.
Hyacinthe’s personal essay, Layered in Love: Musings on Love’s Palpability in Some Sahelian and West African Art Forms, muses on how some art forms can make the feeling of love palpable. Focusing on Seydou Keita’s Untitled (c. 1958), a photograph of a young woman and a suitor with a guitar, Henri Matisse’s La Musique (1939), and Sounou (2004), a series of still shots from a video depicting the Malian dance form Sounou, Hyacinthe explores how these works of art create a space that is ”warmed and secured like a tight hug from a lover.” She analyses the use of earth toned colors, musical instruments, interior design and patterns, the graininess of still photography, prayer mats and rugs, and the flirtatious movements of Malian dancers. Furthermore, her essay includes an analysis of the experimental Senegalese film Touki Bouki (1973) directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty – a romantic tale of two revolutionary lovers riding on a motorcycle.
Genevieve Hyacinthe writes about modern and contemporary art and visual culture. She is an MFA Fine Arts faculty member at School of Visual Arts and in Parsons School of Design’s School of Art, Media, and Technology Program, both in Manhattan. Her PhD is in History of Art and Architecture (Harvard), and she has been studying and performing West African and Caribbean dance and drum forms around the world since 2001. Her book, Radical Virtuosity: Ana Mendieta and the Black Atlantic (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press), will be released in Fall 2019. Hyacinthe’s beloved dog, Kingston, is her constant writing companion.
