Nicolas Molé (New Caledonia-Nouméa)
Nicolas Molé (b. 1975 in France) is a Kanak-descent artist actively working in Noumea, New Caledonia. Even though he was born in France, Molé has been proactive in exploring Kanak culture after returning to his ancestral land.
Molé mostly creates drawing, animation, and video to respond to the natural objects and culture of New Caledonia. His artworks also have a performative tendency close to Melanesian culture. Molé has participated in the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 2015–2016 held in QAGOMA (Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art), a number of solo exhibitions, and residency in Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art, Taiwan in 2014.
“Untitled” (2021)
Mural and video projection
On December 12, 2021, New Caledonian voters will have to answer YES or NO to the following question: “Do you want New Caledonia to gain full sovereignty and become independent?”. This third referendum is the last of a long process of decolonization, recorded by the New Caledonian political forces and the French state, more than thirty years ago.
Nicolas’s work is a caricatural critique of this binary choice, dividing and fracturing New Caledonian society between the pros and cons of independence, Kanaky and New Caledonia; an identity duel with France as paternalistic arbiter. And even if in the 21st century, the time of the colonies seems over, in Kanaky-New Caledonia, the French colonial history is not concluded. In the words of Edwy Plenel, in an October 2020 article: “We do not turn a page without having read it to the end. You don’t dismiss a past without looking it in the face. We do not put an end to a legacy of injustice, conquest and violence, without making a clear break with the sad passions of domination and appropriation that gave birth to it.”
