asser saint-val

Lives and works in Miami, FL, USA

Artist statement

The biology of skin color has always captured my imagination - Why my skin is dark, for instance. This questions becomes more pressing when I moved to the US from Haiti, and experienced racial discrimination. I began researching neuromelanin and the pineal gland, and expressed my findings in paintings and multi-sensory, interactive art installations. This fascination with neuromelanin springs from a desire to understand who I am. Neuromelanin is a dark pigment secreted by the pineal gland, found in the center of the brain. René Descartes theorized that the pineal gland is, “the principal seat of the soul, and the place in which all our thoughts are formed.” Dr. Richard King posited, “On a philosophical plane, neuromelanin is the biological doorway through which the life force of African spirituality passes in moving from the spirit to the material realm.” These investigations led me through many facets of my own identity, spirituality, creative magic, and thought form. My works are quasi-figurative and ambiguous, and bring together ideas central to modern debates about Neuromelanin. My environments are surreal, encompassing themes such as magic, under-recognized African American inventors, the politics of sexual desire, and the complex aesthetics, narratives and metaphors that attach to the organic substance. My work is intended to stimulate questions about the self, reality, and imagination. The spiritual nature of neuromelanin has the capacity to link us to a higher...

Artwork