Char Jeré '23 Exhibits Big in Paris and New York

Sound Art alum Char Jeré '23 takes new work to two groundbreaking group exhibitions exploring cultural exchanges across the Atlantic—and the cosmos—lasting through February 2026.

ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art, Francophone Thought brings Jeré's work to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris alongside renowned artists like Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and Renée Green to explore creative and cultural exchanges between American artists and francophone thinkers, writers, and activists, from the 1970s to the present. Boundary-pushing work by US artists influenced revolutionary theorists such as Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, whose critical reception in the US fundamentally changed the landscape of art and culture.

Jeré joins the conversation with Zone of Nonbeing, one of the few installations commissioned specifically for the exhibition. Composed using repurposed and hacked technologies, Jeré's work brings Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire's critiques of humanism—which highlighted the dehumanizing character of the colonial and racist project that structures Western societies—into the 21st century.

Jeré uses "Black Noise" to form a sort of counter-surveillance against violent, extractive technologies. At the center of the installation, a 24-hour live feed of the U.S. Capitol Building sits atop a baggage x-ray machine, surrounded by black ceramic ears. Seven satellite dishes—which have also been repurposed as surfaces for painting—positioned across Haiti, Chicago, Tigray, Sudan, Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mississippi sonify orbital data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), creating a seven-channel sound composition that translates the invisible architectures of orbit. The work encourages an international audience to keep an eye—and an ear—on landscapes of power in the United States.

At The Drawing Center in New York City, Voice of Space: UFOs and Paranormal Phenomena expands the realm of cultural interrogation beyond earth's orbit. As the question of extraterrestrial activity reenters the mainstream following the declassification of government reports, this exhibition examines our cultural, psychological, and metaphysical preoccupations with aliens—and how they may inform our understanding of humanity. Jeré's mixed media pieces, Go Bag (8" x 10", mixed materials, 2024) and Boundless (8" x 10", mixed materials, 2024) combine material ephemera (wires, pills in plastic packaging, jotted notes and sketches on library book cards, and a deflated balloon) with obscure instructions: "Blow: 2x for spaceship, 3x for health insurance, 4x ???? (TBD), 50x to see time collapse."

Whether interpreting and reimagining the work of Black francophone thinkers or dreaming up instructions for extraterrestrial technologies, Jere's work disrupts linear, colonial notions of time and space.

Spanning sound, installation, sculpture, painting, video, and film, Jeré's work is rooted in a philosophy they have coined "Afro-fractalism," a term that builds on the foundations of Afrofuturism. Within this framework, time is conceived as nonlinear and multidimensional, a conduit that connects the past, present, and future through intergenerational communication with ancestors. Jeré’s work investigates fractures and connections within Black diasporic history along with possibilities for reclaiming and reshaping narratives around race and technology. Their collages, which synthesize a range of materials, incorporate incantations for time collapse and the summoning of spaceships as well as references to ancient cultural histories. They received their MS in Data Analytics and Visualization from Pratt Institute and graduated with their MFA in Sound Art from Columbia University in 2023.

Voice of Space: UFOs and Paranormal Phenomena is on view October 17, 2025–February 1, 2026 at The Drawing Center, located at 35 Wooster Street in New York City.

ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art, Francophone Thought is on view October 22, 2025–February 15, 2026 at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.