"Tour de Controle" 1997
videograph on 2 metre tall plinth

This animation of the artist orbiting on a 360 degree revolution, seen through filters of colours problematises perceptions of race passing The translucent stripes of colours refer to racial groups as black, brown, beige, yellow, red and white. These filters flick as the artist rotates creating an hypnotic movement. This piece is to be seen on a television screen perched on the top of a very tall plinth. The filters refer to the level of tolerance and prejudice incurred in every part of the world. Like a light house lamp, the artist face beams through the filters, recognising the humanity of her being away from racial and cultural constraints. The artist has been thought of being of many nationality/race including Arabic, Indian, Carribean, Spanish, Dutch, German, Swiss, Belgian!
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Blood lines have justified wealth and status within the aristocratic circles whilst segregating black from white in poorer quarters. Based upon the principle that Queen Charlotte (1744-1818), [wife of King George III, Queen Victoria's grandmother] had the "true face of a mulatto", this provocative piece, entitled "Fractions & Equivalences", is a visual dissection of admixture equations that redraws the British royal family tree as a genogram of strategic mating and breeding designed to dilute the black gene. Her royal lineage links her Negroid features, through the black branch of the Portuguese royal family, to an African princess of the Algarves, [Madelena Gil or Mourana Gil] who had an illegitimate son with Alfonso III, King of Portugal in the 13th Century.

The blackboard is an educational tool where layers upon layers of knowledge are passed onto the next generation. In this case, references are made to Castas paintings [a genre dedicated to recording the status and lineage of people of mixed blood (Spanish/Indian/Negro) in 18th century Latin America] and the work of the anthropologist Caroline Bond Day [who recorded photographic evidences of wealthy mulatto families in the United States in the 1930s]. The chalk mark making is easily erased yet the editing is crucial in forming one's own identity.
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This piece is an elaborate visual diary of an alien, the artist Agnes Poitevin-Navarre, settling in England. It is a trace of how friendships and other acquaintances are born, grow and die. The individuals who cross the artist's path are depicted as colour-coded pictograms labelling their nationality, gender and names. A pattern reveals the fluctuation of these people in the microcosm of the artist's life and the incidence of multiculturalism as a whole. It also speaks of the complexity and visibility of multi-national and multi-racial pool of people in various part of England
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Two old fashioned phones are perched on plinths during the Bound show at Commercial Two Gallery, London, 1996. Sound is playing through the phone heads. On one side is a monologue of the artist complaining that the other person never answers the phone. This allegorical work reflects on lack of communication between mother country and satellite colonial territory or the daughter in exile.
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Eye contact Double Video projection 1997