Review / AG jan / mars 2026
Seen From Below (Vu d’en Bas) Exposition de Shamika Germain, javier – avril 2026
Habitation Beausoleil, Saint – Claude, Guadeloupe
Commissariat, David Demetrius

“Under the curatorial guidance of David Démétrius, the exhibition offers a sensitive approach to the stories of foster care children. The artist holds space for reflection on journeys of childhood shaped by separation, institutional support and healing.”

(Credit: Catalogue d’exposition)

I just don’t  know at what point we grow up, nor at what point we are the ones who get to decide for ourselves, for others.  All of a sudden, it is as though the world we once saw as children no longer exists. Gone. One day, just like that, the game is over. One day the world has become all too serious, because Life is not a game…We also forget that once upon a time, we were the little children in a big world made by big people and adults.

It is the strangest feeling everytime I go back to the home where I grew up.  In my mind, I can remember it all. Everything exactly the way we left it: the faux-satin curtains, the cream doilies, the vases filled with artificial flowers, the doors, the terrazzo floor — the colors slightly faded yet intact. The only difference though: the rooms feel so tight. The place where we used to sit and make mud cakes, the plants, the mango tree — everything is so much smaller now.

What remains, however, are the memories of everything I felt in that house until I was ten years old.

It must be this little girl — welcoming us at the exhibition entrance, on the poster, on the invitation cards — with her yellow Sunday dress complete with its lacey collar, who’s taken me back in time. She is everywhere. It’s as if her little hand is softly holding mine, and she is right there with me when I find myself leaning forward, knees bent a little lower than usual to look at the details in the works presented by Shamika Germain, in her new exhibition Seen From Below (Habitation Beausoleil, Saint-Claude at the Fonds d’Art Contemporain Guadeloupe, January / April 2026).

Curated by David Demetrius, Seen From Below draws us into the world of children placed in foster care — or rather displaced. Displacement in a very physical way, when one considers the multiple transfers while waiting for “the right foster family.”  The exhibition conveys this experience of being so small in a huge world, at the mercy of adults: they could be nice sometimes, then horrible, kind one day, unpredictable the next.

On both personal and collective levels, Seen From Below  also recalls the overwhelming statistics of these children “stuck in the system.” Some manage to make it out, others just do not. The numbers speak for themselves: depression, distress, isolation.The suicide rate among youth who have passed through institutions continues to rise.  

For this show Shamika Germain has presented a series of paintings, sculptures, texts and installations that retrace her experience as a child who grew up in these foster homes (from Jamaica, to Saint Martin, to Guadeloupe). Like so many other children waiting for adoption, she knows the meaning of neglect, the lack of care, fear, violence, and helplessness when faced with these grown-ups: powerful, intimidating and always in control.

This is not fun and games.
On n’est pas là pour rigoler.

The scenography, minimalist, plays with a yellow, warm, and soft light. The shadows cast by the welded iron cradles are far from the soft, cozy atmosphere of a baby’s room. There is a consistency to the color palette chosen by the artist: a series of deep blues and browns, mahogany, burgundy, blood red and deep purple saturating both landscape and bodies. The density of the palette is intentional, the viewer can immediately sense the gravity of the stories unfolding.

These contrasts give the exhibition all its strength and beauty.

There are a number of recurring motifs in this show:  omnipresent eyes; the maternal figure; a mother who seems to be everywhere yet nowhere at the same time. Heavy, taut, yearning breasts, droplets of mother’s milk…. A metaphor for lost love, regret, emotional grief of motherhood? Maybe. But then again what does it even mean to be a mother? What does it mean to take care?

The true heroes of this exhibition are the little boys and girls who we see in these works. These children continue to show up, exist and resist, in a world that surpasses them. These little people speak to us through their postures, guiding us through this dark, ambiguous, threatening universe. They open up about their thoughts, their fears, their terrifying nightmares with us. Nightmares of gigantic monsters – two or three at the same time, shadows, eyes on the walls or lurking in the darkness… These are the adults, they are everywhere. And they are looking down at us.  As I contemplate these characters, I am once again taken back to my childhood. The figures painted by Shamika Germain are almost always alone, surrounded by unsettling elements and always this immense void — deep, painful, ominous.

“Photographs and installations create an intimate universe where the image becomes a means of speaking, of remembering and of reclaiming one’s own story. The maternal figure runs through the exhibition as a symbolic presence: that of care, attention, and connection.It reminds us how much these gestures lay the foundationfor our first attachments and our emotional memories.”

(Credit: Catalogue d’exposition)

Seen From Below thus invites us to take a careful and compassionate look at trajectories that are often discreet, but essential to our collective memory.

Far from locking us into the arena of melancholy, I receive this exhibition as a wake-up call. An invitation to open our eyes, to be more vigilant, to revisit the way in which we show up and navigate this world.

What can we see by sitting a little lower? 

By bending our knees? 

By really listening to what children have to say?

Seen From Below reveals the reality of so many children, who find themselves caught up in the tentacles of a sprawling machine — the system, the State, Institutions, guardians, foster parents — but also the reality of the adults operating it.

What remains therefore is our duty to remember: to never forget these little voices. 

These children who are not “ours” in the biological sense — but who are nonetheless.

Our capacity for evolution and renewal as individuals, as a people and as a society remain inextricably linked to the trajectories of our children, the collective experience of a younger generation. A generation of young people who will never forget — and rightly so.

*doily – doilies (pl.): a crocheted mat

//.