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| Paintings in Haiti: Two Centuries of Artistic Creation (Photo: McKenzie) |
Nearly five years after the devastating earthquake in
Haiti, a wide-ranging exhibition of the country’s contemporary art began
Wednesday in Paris, a testament to survival and a bold move to shatter
misconceptions about Haitian culture.
Going far beyond stereotypes of naïve painting, the
show aims to “transcend the magico-religious and exotic vision too often
simplistically associated with Haitian art”, according to the curators.
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| A visitor views work by Jean-Michel Basquiat. (Photo: McKenzie) |
“We didn’t want to repeat what has been done before,
so this really is contemporary work with a glance to the past, or a dialogue
between the past and the present,” said Mireille Pérodin Jérôme,
director of a museum in Port-au-Prince and co-curator of the exhibition with
Régine Cuzin, who heads a France-based artistic events company.
“The works include all styles, and the artists were
chosen for the force of their expressions,” Pérodin Jérôme told SWAN. “The
impact of the earthquake is of course present, with some of the artists addressing
issues of continued poverty, of people still living in precarious conditions.”
The exhibition, titled Haiti: Two Centuries of Artistic Creation, will run for three months
at the landmark Grand Palais national galleries. It’s already generating a buzz
in the French capital, especially because of the range of the 56 artists
represented and the level of the 160-plus works displayed.
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| Jean-Ulrick Désert stands before his artwork. |
Alongside creations by celebrated figures such as Jean-Michel
Basquiat, Hervé Télémaque and Robert Saint-Brice, one can find striking works
by acclaimed “contemporary artists of all generations”, living in Haiti and
abroad.
The Berlin-based architect-artist Jean-Ulrick Désert
has two pieces in the show that immediately capture attention. His huge wall
installation, labeled The Goddess Constellations / Sky Above Port-au-Prince 12
January 2010, 9:53 pm, is particularly poignant.
Rather than focusing on the physical destruction, Désert
shows the constellations at the precise time of the catastrophe, evoking
destiny, religion, astrology, power, powerlessness and the immense human toll. The artwork, measuring
300 x 300 cm, comprises hundreds of metal disks pinned into nine polystyrene
panels covered in red velvet.
Each orb represents the exact location of the stars
and planets at the time, and Désert said he worked from a satellite map to get
it right. When one looks closer, one can also see that the pieces of metal are
all embossed - with various images of the legendary American singer Josephine
Baker, whom Désert considers a kind of goddess.
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| Jospehine Baker "in the stars", |
“Because this exhibition is taking place in France, I
wanted to have some Parisian gesture as well, because Josephine Baker is the
perfect example of an icon in exile,” Désert told SWAN.
The piece pairs well with his floor installation, The Goddess Temple, which consists of
carpeting, concrete, black and white velvet, glass, and Arabic text from the
poem The Ruins (made famous in song by
the Egyptian star Oum Kalsoum). Désert said this work was inspired by the
façade of a house built for Baker.
The artist, who studied architecture in New York, is
presented at the exhibition in “tête-à-tête” with Finland-based plasticien Sasha
Huber, who also does installations. The show has three of these “face-to-face” or
“dialogue” sections, in addition to areas devoted to untitled works,
landscapes, spirits and chiefs.
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| Robert Saint-Brince "in dialogue" with Sébastien Jean |
The other “tete-a-tete” segments feature Télémaque and
Basquiat; and Saint-Brice and Sébastien Jean.
In the latter, one can view a
painting by Saint-Brice that was almost destroyed by the earthquake. Titled Loas and painted around 1958, it was buried in the rubble for nearly two months and has now been restored by experts
at the Smithsonian Institution.
The earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people,
also ruined numerous artworks; and while these can never be replaced, young
Haitian artists are continuing the island’s cultural traditions, said Pérodin Jérôme.
Among the participants in the exhibition is
28-year-old rising star Manuel Mathieu, born in Port-au-Prince in 1986,
educated in Montreal and now working and studying in London.
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| Artist Manuel Mathieu |
Mathieu uses different elements for his art, including
photography, installation and video; but he’s showing two arresting semi-abstract
paintings in the Paris show, with mixed media on canvas.
Mathieu told SWAN that taking part in the exhibition
was like “having a big party with your friends”, since some of his colleagues and mentors, like the installation and performance artist Mario Benjamin, were also involved.
“I’m happy to be here and to show to everyone that we
have a diverse and complex culture in Haiti,” Mathieu said. “Trying to put
nearly sixty artists together is a journey in itself.”
The exhibition took nearly three years to
bring to fruition, and it may also be regarded as a journey beyond the earthquake. Several
of the artists described the profound impact the disaster has had on their work, and
according to one, Vladimir Cybil Charlier, some found it near impossible to produce anything afterwards.
Charlier, who was born in New York but who attended
schools in Haiti, told SWAN that the earthquake “razed” her childhood in
Port-au-Prince.
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| Vladimir Cybil Charlier and her response to Preacher Pat. |
“It’s like it never existed, except in my
imagination,” she said, adding that even “airport art”, or pieces sold to
tourists, became “grimmer” after 2010.
In her work, Charlier plays with the idea of looking
through several windows at the same time, using collage, ink, paper, wood and
pencil to create distinctive pieces that gradually reveal layers of narrative
to the viewer.
Her two pieces at the exhibition are from her Postcard to Preacher Pat series, a
riposte to American televangelist Pat Robertson who preached that the
earthquake was a consequence of Haiti being “cursed” because its people “swore
a pact to the devil”.
Pointing to Robertson’s ignorance and shameful posturing, Charlier
said her artwork is also a critique of the missionaries who flooded Haiti after
the earthquake, many without any understanding of the country’s culture.
Her collages are among the political pieces in the
exhibition, which will also teach spectators much about the nation’s history.
Through art, visitors will gain further insight into Haiti’s slave revolution and its battle
with France to become the first independent country in the Caribbean and Latin
America.
They will also get to understand that Hati’s luminous art is
the real “magic potion”, as famed writer Maryse Condé has said. - A.M.
