black market

The ghost of Nègrepelisse

“I imagine myself with those who ‘mucked in’ amidst the forests around Nègrepelisse. The coalmen. Those who stacked up the wood to burn. Day and night. Watching the fire, in the forest, the embers the sole light illuminating the ghosts that jump out in the night.”
Invited to work on the colour black at La Cuisine, Malte Martin created a sculpture inside the historic walls of the art and design centre.

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workshop

Graphic designer Malte Martin invited second-year master’s students in graphic design from ISCID Montauban to take part in a workshop on black at La Cuisine – “the kitchen” – a centre for art and design.

“We will be running a graphics kitchen and good cooks pay a visit to the market to prepare their culinary creations.
Hence the ‘black market’ – we’ll be looking for all sorts of black materials, from anthracite to graphite, carbon black, India ink, volcanic lava and tar.
The market is ‘black’ because we are not only looking for the ‘official’ forms of symbolism that black represents, but also hidden meanings and smuggled stories: elegance, grief, the Amoco Cadiz disaster and its black, oil-covered seagulls, the faces of miners in Salgado’s photos and of those who ‘mucked in’ amidst the forests of Nègrepelisse.”

The students started the workshop with food for thought: the black recipes of culinary creator Camille Savoy at La Cuisine.