FROSCH&CO is pleased to present ‘Lafleur & Bogaert in New York,’ the first solo exhibition in the U.S. by artist duo Lafleur & Bogaert, bringing together two distinct worlds in a shared visual dialogue. The exhibition features three bodies of work, ‘Twa Drapo,’ ‘J’aime RD Congo,’ and ‘Anba Dlo,‘ including both premiering series and ongoing projects originating from earlier phases, confronting global inequities through found materials and cross-cultural wit. Belgian artist and former human rights lawyer Tom Bogaert and Haitian portrait painter Michel Lafleur met through Port-au-Prince’s Ghetto Biennale, a platform connecting local and international artists, and have collaborated since 2013. Their joint practice merges Lafleur’s vibrant sign-painting roots and Bogaert’s professional background into a visual language of justice, multivalence, and improvisation. In ‘Twa Drapo,’ Lafleur poses in self-portraits inspired by Haitian Vodou flags and European medieval banners, subverting xenophobic narratives with tenderness, animal companionship, and irony. ‘J’aime RD Congo’ transforms everyday Congolese shopping bags into painted cultural emblems, bridging commentary of global art circuits with site-specific socio-economies. ‘Anba Dlo’ (“underwater” in Haitian Créole) dives into the material and spiritual fallout of the diasporic Middle Passage. It links the placeless reverence of water graves to the precarity of migratory island life using found materials, Congolese masks, and fragments of tourist debris.

Lafleur & Bogaert are Artistic Research Initiative (ARI) Fellows