Charlotte Adigéry
Healing, Power
Of Yoruba descent, Caribbean-Belgian artist Charlotte Adigéry is full of brilliant ideas and an aesthetic sensibility that is at once playful and heavy. Adigéry’s songwriting spans topics from synthetic hair to reptiles and further out, but is typically unified by her exploration of identity and the politics of the body.
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Sometimes singing in English other times in French and recently in Creole, Adigéry's music is about delivery and personality, which can be cloying and sarcastic at the same time that is invested in healing and bringing peace to the listener.
She is an artist for DEEWEE studios, a Belgium-based label founded and run by the Dewaele brothers aka Soulwax aka 2manydj's. When she signed onto their label, the Dewaele brothers paired her with Bolis Pupul. The pair hit it off and since then perform and record nearly everything together, including her self-titled debut EP, Zandoli EP, the Yin Yang Self-Meditation and most recent project Bear With Me (and I’ll stand bare before you).
Adigéry's visual persona draws a lot on African-American Drag and Ballroom culture, with her love of wigs inspiring the song High Lights, an unbelievably catchy tune about her obsession. The song was released with four others under an album cover that features a design style like a mix between a barbershop advertisement and a digital portrait, at once sweet and pop. On Yin Yang Self-Meditation however, Adigéry adopts a different style, more serious and psychedelic, a cross between a club space in monochrome lights and a dim performance art space. And the piece is the latter at the same time that it is a guided meditation in which Adigéry divulges all the anxieties and fears she has, related to her ethnicity, her gender, her body, her experience as a performer. And then she reminds herself, and the listener, that it is only a "mental interpretation," instructing herself to breathe and allow the body to let them go.
The piece is extremely powerful, intensely vulnerable, which endears the audience at the same time that it unnerves them. Additionally, the exercise ends with Adigéry prompting the listener to perform the same kind of meditation, to record their anxieties and breathe through them. Should the listener accept the invitation, and record the "B-side" of the track, as Adigéry says, they experience a deep catharsis, coming into an understanding of the body and returning to "the core" where one is safe. Adigéry is working as a healer at the same time that she is healing herself, making the work all the more profound.
Statement by Omar El-Sabrout
Adigéry's visual persona draws a lot on African-American Drag and Ballroom culture, with her love of wigs inspiring the song High Lights, an unbelievably catchy tune about her obsession. The song was released with four others under an album cover that features a design style like a mix between a barbershop advertisement and a digital portrait, at once sweet and pop. On Yin Yang Self-Meditation however, Adigéry adopts a different style, more serious and psychedelic, a cross between a club space in monochrome lights and a dim performance art space. And the piece is the latter at the same time that it is a guided meditation in which Adigéry divulges all the anxieties and fears she has, related to her ethnicity, her gender, her body, her experience as a performer. And then she reminds herself, and the listener, that it is only a "mental interpretation," instructing herself to breathe and allow the body to let them go.
The piece is extremely powerful, intensely vulnerable, which endears the audience at the same time that it unnerves them. Additionally, the exercise ends with Adigéry prompting the listener to perform the same kind of meditation, to record their anxieties and breathe through them. Should the listener accept the invitation, and record the "B-side" of the track, as Adigéry says, they experience a deep catharsis, coming into an understanding of the body and returning to "the core" where one is safe. Adigéry is working as a healer at the same time that she is healing herself, making the work all the more profound.
Statement by Omar El-Sabrout
Credits:
Yin Yang Self-Meditation
Video Directed by Jorre Janssens
Set Design: Justine Verplancke
Camera & Tech Assistance: Vincent Lynen
Styling: Angela Vanderstraeten
MUA: Louiza Van de Woestyne
Color Grading: Xavier Dockx
Art Direction: Ill-Studio
Produced: Jarri Van der Haegen
Recorded, Produced, Mixed and Filmed at DEEWEE
Zandoli EP
Drawings by Joelle Dubois
Art Direction & Sleeve Design by ILL Studio
Highlights
Video Directed by Joaquim Bayle
Director Assistant: Johanna Makabi
DOP: Clément Gérard
1st AC: Eudes Quitellier
Art Director: Eliz Dream
Assistant Art Director: Charlie Bouffart
Stylist: Maame Nsiah
MUA: Flavie Terracol
Gaffer: Angelo Marques
Spark: Pauline Soleil
Spark: Burbaud Nicolas
Editor: Sarah Ceravolo
Motion Designer: Charlie Bouffaert
Colorist: Eudes Quitellier
Producer: Jarri Van der Haegen
Line Producer & Producer Manager: Clément Vanpeperstraete
Charlotte Adigéry
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