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Feb
08th
DINING GUIDE
Miami - Brickell / Downtown
Midtown/Wynwood/Design District
Written By Anne Tschida
Miami - Upper Eastside
LITTLE HAITI’S NEW CULTURAL CENTER HOSTS A COMPELLING EXHIBIT OF
CARIBBEAN ART
And She Swings So Sweetly: The work of Haitian-American
Miami resident Vickie Pierre is delicate and decorative, but
with an underlying suggestion of graffiti and female body
parts.
Haitian artist André Eugéne’s
sculptures in the exhibition “Global
Caribbean” are made from old
rubber tires. They are small,
mythical creatures or “fetish
effigies” -- familiar representations
in Haitian art -- otherworldly and
also demonic. The material, too, is
representative. Much of that
country’s and the Caribbean’s art
is fashioned from the commercial
world’s discards, an allusion to
what the nations themselves have
been made from since their
colonial days.
The carefully chosen works in
this superb show reflect the
Caribbean reality and mythology,
the dark and the light, the
troubled past, present, and future,
and the incredible vibrancy of the
artistic output from a region that
starts at the tip of Florida and ends
on the shores of South America.
After January 12, that reality took on new meaning. The earthquake that ravaged Haiti gives a
new poignancy and power to this art, from 23 of the Caribbean’s top artists, being shown in a
gleaming new space in the magnificent new Little Haiti Cultural Center.
The image of sunny isles and the ultimate tropical tourist escape has always clashed with the
darker one, of brutal dictatorships, occupations, and stark social inequalities. While recent photos
and stories of unimaginable destruction overwhelm our senses, this beautiful show seeks to
address these contradictions.
Organized and curated by
prominent Haitian artist and Miami
resident Edouard Duval-Carrié,
“Global Caribbean” deals with the
lives and histories of African
descendants of the region, as well
as with the capriciousness of the
very ground itself. In the show’s
catalogue -- published well before
the earthquake -- Duval-Carrié
wrote: “A definite constant in the
region is the wrath of mother
nature…. Along with the damage
wrought by the weather,
colonialization, slavery and
plantation economies could also be
Hew Locke’s Kingdom of the Blind # 5,6,7 weaves plastic
toys, flowers, chains, and guns into a sculptural tapestry of seen as agents of destruction in
the region.”
modern Caribbean life. Photo by Thierry Bal
So Creole Portrait II: A
Collection and Singular & Scarce Creole Portrait Heads to Perpetuate the Memory of the WOMAN
of Egypt ESTATE in Jamaica, lithographs from Barbados native Joscelyn Gardner, underscores
some of the traumatic origins of Caribbean nations. A centerpiece of black-braided hair is
surrounded by images of instruments used to torture slaves.
The everyday violence of today’s Caribbean world is inescapable in the work of Dominican
artist Jorge Piñeda with Afro-Fight -- Issue III, its faceless fighter in army fatigues butting
against the wall; as well as in Hew Locke’s Kingdom of the Blind, three huge sculptures pieced
together with plastic chains, dinosaurs, and guns.
But Kingdom also highlights what this show succeeds in relating -- that in the face of almost
insurmountable odds, artistic expression can heal and even bring joy into relentlessly joyless
lives. While these “blind” sculptures can look devilish, they also include a profusion of colorful
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plastic flowers and beads. Life goes on, they seem to say, especially through art.
Jamaican-born Arthur Simms crafted another one of the outstanding sculptures in the
exhibition, again made from the detritus of the commercial world: bottles, rope, scrap metal,
skateboards, a birdcage, and a bike. While playful, the title aims to dampen the spirit a bit:
Caged Bottle.
No country has been more traumatized in the Western Hemisphere than Haiti, and viewing
this show in the wake of the earthquake can’t help but color the picture even more darkly.
Sitting on a baroque chair in his expansive studio,
Duval-Carrié says that art, music, and dance have
always sustained life in Haiti, and that it will once again
as the country struggles to recover. But it won’t be easy,
says the Port-au-Prince native, looking tired but still
filled with humor. His family there has survived, as it
appears did artist André Eugéne, a founder of the Grand
Rue art movement. But it also appears that much of
Haiti’s cultural history, and visual arts, have disappeared
-- maybe forever -- in the rubble of the capital city and
the seaside town of Jacmel.
Duval-Carrié believes that the Little Haiti Cultural
Center, adjacent to his studio, and the Haitian Cultural
Arts Alliance that he heads, will have to play a major
role in documenting and preserving that culture.
In an office connected to his studio, some of that
documentation has taken place already -- the alliance
has a catalogue of books, original documents, and maps.
The new cultural center is now home to four
Afro-Caribbean dance troupes, as well as an impressive
black box theater that will host musical groups and film
screenings from the region.
Blue Curry’s Untitled drapes yards of
But without Duval-Carrié himself, much of this would
used cassette tape from a shark’s jaw not exist. Although the City of Miami initially funded the
-- elegant and disturbing at the same center and now staffs it, Duval-Carrié, long active among
time. Photo courtesy of the artist
the Caribbean diaspora in Miami and abroad, brought in
the French government to sponsor “Global Caribbean,”
along with promises of future exhibits and exchanges. Because of its historic (and difficult) ties
to the Caribbean, France has created a cultural outreach arm, “Caraïbes en créations,” to fund
such projects, and Duval-Carrié lobbied for Miami to be a focal point of this initiative.
While he is currently active in various relief efforts, Duval-Carrié says he wants to put most of
his time and energy into raising money and awareness of what must be done over the long haul
to resuscitate Haiti. To that end, he plans an art auction, featuring very significant work, that
could help fund a symposium of thinkers, scientists, and social and environmental planners.
“We have to start from ground zero,” he says. “We can not rebuild it the way it was before, a
complete and total disaster, built by tyrants and crooks to benefit the very few and starve the
rest. Believe me, as someone who knew Port-au-Prince when the sea was crystal clear, that city
should never be rebuilt the way it was, including its meaningless palaces and political
structures.”
Anger flairs as he talks about the past and the present, but then he smiles as he says that the
famous quilt makers from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, have already offered to donate a quilt for such
an auction. “Drastic measures must be taken,” he adds. “We need to formulate a serious vision
for the future.”
Back in the bright exhibition
space, a current vision of the world
is beautifully and disturbingly
expressed. Bahamian artist Blue
Curry has suspended from the
ceiling the skeletal jaw of a bull
shark. Spilling out of the shark’s
mouth to the floor are 754 hours’
worth of used cassette tapes. It
can look alternately like a
glamorous evening gown or a
hideous concoction of dead
animals and plastic garbage.
Duval-Carrié acknowledges that
duality: “Whether they [the
artists] are part of well-intentioned
cultural directives or they are solo
Edouard Duval-Carrié believes art, music, and dance will
acts whose productions are in
sustain Haiti as it struggles to recover. BT photo Mandy
defiance of all odds, I want to
Baca
honor their efforts by presenting
them and their works in a pristine new facility, which provides the proper environment to
enhance their visual acts.”
You can be involved in both relief efforts and broader planning at the cultural center. On
February 14, the resident dance troupe Dance Now and a drum collective will hold a benefit for
Haiti relief, with a suggested donation of $35; 305-960-2967. March 4-6, in the black box
theater, the University of Miami will hold a seminar about the future of Caribbean culture;
305-757-5307. “Global Caribbean” runs through March at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, 260 NE
59th Terr., Miami; 305-960-2969.
Courtesy of Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery
Betty Rosado, from the Identity series, 2001, Silver gelatin print
Jorge Pineda, Afro Fight, 2007-09, Mixed media policromed wood,
boxing gloves, drawing
Blue Curry, (detail) Untitled, 2009, Mixed media, steel and plastic
Curator EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIE
ARRECHEA ALEXANDRE Cuba
AWAI NICOLE Trinidad
Global Caribbean
Focus on the Contemporary Caribbean Visual Art Landscape
December 4, 2009-March 30, 2010 Little Haiti Cultural Center
260 NE 59th Terrace Miami FL 33137
BOCLE JEAN-FRANCOIS Martinique
BURKE ALEX Martinique
CAMPBELL CHARLES Jamaica
CASTELLO KEISHA Jamaica
COZIER CHRISTOPHER Trinidad
CURRY BLUE Bahamas
DAMOISON DAVID Martinique
DENIS MAKSAENS Haiti
DIAGO ROBERTO Cuba
EUGENE ANDRE Haiti
FERLY JOELLE Guadeloupe
FRORUP KENDRA Bahamas
GARDNER JOSCELYN Barbados
GRIFFITH MARLON Trinidad
LOCKE HEW Guyana
MARTINEZ MELVIN Puerto Rico
PAIEWONSKY RAQUEL Dominican Republic
PEÑA GUSTAVO Dominican Republic
PIERRE VICKIE Haiti
PINEDA JORGE Dominican Republic
ROSADO BETTY Puerto Rico
SIMMS ARTHUR Jamaica
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The exhibit, curated by Edouard Duval-Carrié, an internationally
renowned artist living and working in Little Haiti in the heart
of Miami, is a major project launched by Caraibes en Creation,
a new program of Culturesfrance, the French Government
agency for international cultural exchanges.
The exhibit will showcase contemporary artists from
throughout the Caribbean.
“Whatever the artistic experiences might be and however
varied they are, when analyzing the Caribbean region’s
production, the underlying notion is that our history is fraught
with serious social and economic fragility,” said Duval-Carrié.
“One can add to this picture a racial construct that is closer to
the patchwork than a large brushstroke, and an evolution
that is rather short in span.”
Duval-Carrié added that the region’s history, as a colonial/
plantation backwater of European powers, interested only
in a systematic exploitation of their colonies, has not been
conducive to artistic expressions worthy of that name. Some
Caribbean nations, breaking with their respective colonizing
nations have created the need to assert their independence
with some sort of af irmation of their cultural prerogatives,
he said. He went on to say that this af irmation was done
in some cases as a conscious effort by the governing elites,
as in the case of Cuba, to promote and nurture the national
cultural expressions, through institutions such as art schools,
museums. At the other end of this cultural assertion program
is the case-model of Haiti, which imposed its cultural identity
Hew Locke, Kingdom of the Blind #5-6-7, 2009, Courtesy of Hales Gallery
by the sheer will and ingenuity of its peasantry, in the total
absence of any elitist guidance, Duval-Carrié said.
“The case for the rest of the island-nations of the Caribbean can
be said to vacillate between those two models,’’ Duval-Carrié
added. “Some have programs, others don’t. But what they all
have are artists, and the thrust of my effort is to prove that
whatever the case, these artists are alive and well. Whether
they are part of well-intentioned cultural directives or are solo
acts whose productions are in de iance of all odds, I want to
honor their efforts by presenting them and their works in a
pristine new facility that will only enhance the quality and
strength of their visuals.”
photo by Thierry Bal
Global Caribbean Art Showcased During Art Basel Fair
Artist Hew Locke, of Guyana, talks to a reporter at the
opening of “The Global Caribbean” exhibit in the Little
Haiti area of Miami, Friday, Dec. 4, 2009. Locke’s
installation “Kingdom of the Blind” is shown in the
background. The exhibit includes paintings, sculpture
and other installations by 25 contemporary artists from
Cuba, Trinidad, Haiti, the Bahamas and other Caribbean
countries. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
MIAMI, FL – Hundreds of hours of shiny black cassette
tape pour through a toothy shark jaw suspended from
the ceiling in an untitled artwork by Bahamian artist Blue
Curry.
Hew Locke
This is not the Caribbean art tourists expect to find on
their hotel walls or in gift shops.
A new exhibit showcasing Curry and 22 other Caribbean-born contemporary artists intends to expand the imagery associated with the
archipelago of tropical islands between Florida and South America.
“It’s not folk art. It’s not souvenirs,” said Miami-based Haitian artist Edouard Duval-Carrie, curator of “The Global Caribbean” exhibit.
“It’s real art based on very deep historical, psychological, social, economic upheavals and movements that make this region quite a fascinating
one,” he said.
The exhibit opened Friday as part of Art Basel Miami Beach, the annual four-day contemporary art fair that draws collectors to the Miami area.
“The Global Caribbean” is being staged in a new cultural center in Miami’s gritty Little Haiti district.
Caribbean contemporary artists are seldom seen in the international art market, and “The Global Caribbean” presents their work both to
regional communities and to a wider audience, said officials from Culturesfrance, a French government agency whose initiatives in the islands
led to the exhibit.
Visitors looks at artist’s exhibits at the opening of “The
Global Caribbean” exhibit in the Little Haiti area of
Miami, Friday, Dec. 4, 2009. The exhibit includes
paintings, sculpture and other installations by 25
contemporary artists from Cuba, Trinidad, Haiti, the
Bahamas and other Caribbean countries. (AP
Photo/Alan Diaz)
The 23 artists are linked by their Caribbean heritage –
hailing from Cuba, Martinique, Haiti, Jamaica, the
Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Trinidad, Guadeloupe, the
Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico – though many
now live in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
The exhibit includes photography, paintings, sculptures
and video installations. Duval-Carrie said each artist was
selected to illustrate the region’s diverse talents,
connections and experiences with natural disasters,
colonization and migration.
Some pieces clearly reference the legacy of slavery on Caribbean plantations. Faceless fabric dolls line up in an untitled installation by Alex Burke
of Martinique. Colored pencils before the dolls appear to be oars, and the overall piece evokes a ship of stoic prisoners.
Three canvas prints by Jamaican artist Charles Campbell swirl geometric shapes with knots, bloody hand prints and indistinguishable faces.
Combined, the images appear to be a mass of people struggling with an oppression beyond the frame.
A visitor looks at a painting by Cuban artist Roberto Diago at the opening of “The
Global Caribbean” exhibit in the Little Haiti area of Miami, Friday, Dec. 4, 2009. The
exhibit includes paintings, sculpture and other installations by 25 contemporary
artists from Cuba, Trinidad, Haiti, the Bahamas and other Caribbean countries. (AP
Photo/Alan Diaz)
The metal wires binding scrap wood, beer bottles and cast-off wheels in two
sculptures initially appear as simple nets catching ocean debris. But
Jamaican-born Arthur Simms said each material in his two works has a specific
meaning: hemp rope for the drugs associated with that island; glass and metal for
the superstition in some black communities that reflected light wards off evil;
wheels for constant migration throughout the Caribbean. The deceptively rough
assembly of each piece is meant to suggest the handmade carts poor Jamaican
vendors push to sell their wares in the market.
“It’s about the diaspora, it’s about me leaving Jamaica as a child, it’s about the
journey of the Africans coming to this hemisphere,” Simms said.
Some artists’ Caribbean links aren’t immediately apparent. Abstract fan shapes
drip down the pastel canvases of Haitian-American painter Vickie Pierre. A series of
black and white close-ups by Puerto Rican photographer Betty Rosado of a man’s
face, tattoo, chest hair and a prayer card pulled halfway from a pocket reveal his
personality but nothing about Caribbean culture.
Roberto Diago
Artist Arthur Simms, of Jamaica, is shown with his sculptor in the background at the
opening of “The Global Caribbean” exhibit in the Little Haiti area of Miami, Friday,
Dec. 4, 2009. The exhibit includes paintings, sculpture and other installations by 25
contemporary artists from Cuba, Trinidad, Haiti, the Bahamas and other Caribbean
countries. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
Hew Locke warns viewers not to assume that the politics underlying many
Caribbean artists’ works are always the politics of slavery and social class.
Locke, who grew up in Guyana, bound two adult-sized, seething figures with
chains to a much larger horned figure between them in an installation titled
“Kingdom of the Blind.”
The work, about the control of power, was created in a post-9/11 context,
influenced by the wars being fought by the U.S. and the U.K., where he lives, Locke
said.
“Slavery is probably there, because being who I am as soon as I put chains on
something it alludes to that, but the chains keep that power in,” Locke said. “If these
small figures are let off the leash, then who knows what could happen.”
“The Global Caribbean” runs through March 30 and then travels to France.
<Via: Associated Press – © 2008 YellowBrix, Inc.>
Arthur Simms
At the Little Haiti Cultural Center, a world-class exhibit
focuses on the art of the Caribbean
By Carlos Suarez De Jesus
Published on January 12, 2010 at 9:25am
At the barely known and underused Little Haiti Cultural Center, a world-class exhibit focusing on the
art of the Caribbean begs for attention.
Curated by Miami's Edouard Duval-Carrié, largely funded by the French government, and cosponsored
by the City of Miami and the Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance, "Global Caribbean" features the work of
nearly 25 artists and offers a tantalizing survey of the region's top talent and contemporary trends.
The exhibition showcases videos, sculpture, photography, painting, and mixed-media installations
that gather the detritus of a colonized culture to create stunning collages of social commentary on the
endless search for cultural identity.
During this past Art Basel, the art world glitterati flocked to the exhibit's opening, which generated a
lion's share of buzz, but since its brief moment in the sun, the show has remained unnoticed by the
local community. That's a crying shame.
Inside the gorgeous, pristine gallery space — featuring sparkling terrazzo floors, gleaming skylights,
and an inviting edifice with a warm Caribbean flair — Cuba's Alexandre Arrechea makes a powerful
statement with his enigmatic video installation, The White Corner. The dual video projection is a
self-portrait, with the artist's twin doppelgangers menacingly confronting each other from opposite
corners of free-standing, angled walls.
On one side, the bare-chested artist wears shorts and wields a sword. On the other, he dons blue jeans
and swings a Louisville Slugger. While their unruly Afros and shifty behavior as they approach each
other with weapons recall the bickering cavemen in Geico commercials, Arrechea's alter egos also
suggest the clash between indigenous cultures and colonizers.
Another artist who whipsaws the peepers is Bahamian Blue Curry. His untitled piece deploys a bull shark jaw and the guts of old
cassette tapes as a commentary on the predatory influence of American pop culture on the island nations of the Caribbean.
The piece hangs from the rafters under a skylight, where the shark's gaping maw vomits a streaming torrent of cassette tape ribbons
that form an ankle-deep puddle on the shiny terrazzo floor. The opaque brown tape catches the sunlight in twinkling reflections,
undulating as rhythmically as a cascading waterfall.
Curry, who often creates works that navigate the tightrope between cultural artifact and tourist souvenir, offers a powerful argument
that foreign cultural influences, when chewed up and swallowed, result in a loss of identity or exploitation and should be belched out
to expel contaminants.
Joscelyn Gardner, who hails from Barbados and lives in Canada, evokes the harrowing history of the Middle Passage through a series of
stellar, impeccably executed lithographs on frosted Mylar.
Titled Creole Portrait III, "A Collection and Singular & Scarce Creole portrait Heads to perpetuate the memory of the WOMAN of Egypt
ESTATE in Jamaica," the artist's haunting images combine intricate black women's hair braids and ornate hairstyles with the oppressive
implements of slave torture. The faceless hairpieces conjure a sense of anonymous suffering, which is magnified by the accompanying
shackles, leg braces, and choke collars.
In Dominican artist Jorge Pineda's installation, a young man appears to be losing a fearsome battle with his inner demons and buries
his head ostrich-style in a wall. Afro-Fight-Issue III features a painted life-size wood-carved figure wearing a camouflage shirt and
sweatpants while his hands are trapped in useless boxing mitts clapped at his sides. His missing head is stuck in a swirling purgatory of
scribbled visual noise rendered in graphite directly onto the wall like a giant, polluted thought bubble. The artist is known for his
installations referencing loss of innocence and the exploitation and abuse of children worldwide.
From work to work, it's evident Duval-Carrié exercised a deft curatorial eye when putting together this thoughtful show.
For example, Arthur Simms's sculptures remind us of how island nations not only are assailed by dominant foreign cultures but also
have become the depository of the world's garbage washing upon their shores.
Simms, a native of Jamaica, created Buddha, an eye-poppingly crusty opus, out of what appears to be beach-scavenged bottles, wood,
bamboo stalks, wire, rope, ice skates, and a birdcage. The conglomeration of disparate objects looks like the ramshackle pushcarts
often seen on island streets and suggests both cross-cultural pollination and the experience of the diaspora.
Along the same lines, Guyana's Hew Locke investigates the tensions between self-identity and the colonial past via a gargantuan
installation titled Kingdom of the Blind # 5, 6, 7. In it, three towering hybrid figures are confected from plastic flowers, Mardi Gras beads,
dolls' heads, and toy dinosaurs, lions, scorpions, and spiders.
His devilish mutants resonate with the veneer of Transformers and are posed against a wall painted a sickly Pepto-Bismol pink. It's as if
Locke lobbed a mortar shell into a dollar store and his cast of kitschy apparitions rose from the fumes.
"This is some of the best work being created in the Caribbean today," Duval-Carrié said during a recent visit to the show. "It's hard to
believe that no one has come to see it after our Basel opening."
The new gallery is part of a multimillion-dollar cultural complex designed by prominent Miami architect Bernard Zyscovich. It boasts a
capacious black box theater, dance rehearsal spaces, community classrooms, computer workrooms, and a sprawling outdoor
esplanade with comfortable seating, a vibrant mural, and a stage for alfresco performances in an area surrounded by swaying palm
trees.
With a mission to promote and present Afro-Caribbean culture locally, the architectural jewel stands out like a shimmering oasis on a
street riddled with colorful yet mostly shabby buildings.
"The complex was initiated by Miami Commissioner Art Teele, who shot himself and never saw its completion," says Duval-Carrié, a
respected local artist whose studio also is part of the compound. "Later, Michelle Spence-Jones was overseeing the project until she ran
into trouble," he says of the city commissioner who was arrested this past November on corruption charges. The center appears to have
been limping along in bureaucratic limbo since opening with modest fanfare in May 2008.
Enter Duval-Carrié, who spent nearly two years organizing this show, launched by Caraïbes en Créations, a new program of
Culturesfrance, the French government agency for international cultural exchanges.
"They financed a great part of the exhibition," Duval-Carrié says. "The City of Miami did give us carte blanche to stage the exhibit, but
the French government funded $120,000 for the project and plans to continue the project locally the next five years with visiting
curators, if all works well."
It's hard to believe the City of Miami dropped the ball on promoting this can't-miss exhibit and the beautiful space that harbors it.
A visit to the Little Haiti Cultural Center promises a voyage of discovery into not only a vibrant and provocative collection of
contemporary Caribbean art, but also of a local cultural treasure that merits no excuse to continue remaining hidden in plain sight.
TRACING THE SPIRITS: ETHNOGRAPHIC ESSAYS ON HAITIAN ART
By Karen McCarthy Brown
University of Washington Press, Seattle
1995. ISBN # 0-295-975040-0
Some comments by Bob Corbett
Feb. 1997
One of the great collections of Haitian art is in the Davenport Museum of Art in Davenport, Iowa. This collection which has at least 78 pieces
on display contains a wide variety of paintings and iron sculptures. Karen McCarthy Brown's book uses that collection, presenting some 48
paintings and sculptures in color plates, many of them full page reproductions.
However, this is much more than just a catalogue of the Davenport collection. Brown, widely known for her powerful book on Haitian
Voodoo, MAMA LOLA: A VODOU PRIESTESS IN BROOKLYN, and other essays on Voodoo, accompanies and organizes these paintings and
sculptures with essays on the interrelationship of Voodoo and Haitian art.
The general thesis is that much of Haitian art, though not all, can be seen to reflect the unique cosmology of the Voodoo religion. Brown
argues this thesis even for painters who are quite outside the Voodoo religion, like Edouard Duval-Carrie and Paul Claude Gardere, but whom
are nevertheless influenced by the presence of Voodoo cosmological features which are part and parcel of Haitian culture.
Brown's short essays detail several features of this cosmology and then illustrate each amply with examples of works in the Davenport
collection. She begins with the veve and poto mitan, explaining their place in Haitian Voodoo, then showing how both the geometric shapes
of the veve and the centering axis of the poto mitan are constant recurring devices in Haitian art. Next she moves to the use of the cross as a
centering image, even when it is the off center cross of Petro Voodoo.
Some of the most interesting material for me to read had to do incredible subtleties that occur in even primitivist Haitian art, as art imitates
the double entendre process of "throwing point," often a way of communicating a rather double edged message which may be taken in a
direct and literal manner, or in another rather hidden fashion. Brown is excellent at demonstrating this fact of Haitian art and religion.
Another whole section of her essay show us Voodoo and its representations reflecting the give and take, binding and loosening, construction
and destruction of forces in the world.
Haitian art, on Brown's view, is deeply tied to Voodoo, and Voodoo is not merely religion. "Vodou is thus a way of thinking, a way of seeing
things, a way of configuring the world."
The structure of the book is varied and offers lots of bits and pieces. First comes the long essay which details the Voodoo cosmology and
demonstrates it in art. Then there are treatments of 17 different artists represented in the collection with a full page color plate of each
author's work. This is followed by lengthy interviews with two contemporary Haitian painters, Edouard Duval-Carrie and Paul Claude Gardere.
The next part of the book goes far beyond the Davenport Museum, and is a section I found extremely interesting. It is a treatment of Haiti's
political murals, especially from the 1994 and following period. Brown provides 17 of these murals in color photos, all but one by Martha
Cooper. Brown provides commentary which place the murals in the political battles which were going on at that period. What was exciting
for me were the murals themselves. Brown's analyses of where they fit in the political scheme of things are quite straight forward and lack the
depth of treatment that she provided on the Voodoo themes.
This intriguing section is followed by yet another interview, this time with two of the mural painters, Charlemagne Celestin and Vladmir
Ronald Moliere.
The book concludes with several pages which list all of the works which are in the Davenport collection at the time of this book, some 73
pieces.
I was intrigued by the central thesis, and Brown's handling of the details of Voodoo cosmology and her well-chosen illustrations. I've read
many "art books" about Haiti and most of them are historical in approach, showing the developments of people and styles in a chronological
fashion, or they are merely "picture books" of major paintings and sculptures. This book offers a very specific focus, an engrossing one at that,
and in the process, presents a wide sampling of the very impressive Davenport collection.
Three Transnational Artists
José Bedia, Edouard Duval-Carrié and Keith Morrison By Judith Bettelheim
Originally published The International Review of African American Art, Vol. 15, No. 3
José Bedia, Edouard Duval-Carrié and Keith Morrison are three Caribbean artists who now reside in the United States. Morrison moved from Jamaica
to the United States in 1959 to enter college and has remained here since. He is currently dean of the College of Creative Arts at San Francisco State
University. Duval-Carrié's family moved from Haiti to Puerto Rico when he was a child. He attended high school in New York and university in Canada.
He now has homes in Miami and Haiti. José Bedia moved with his wife and son from Cuba to Mexico in 1990 and then to Miami in 1993.
Conceptions of an artist's home or national identity are becoming increasingly variable. Many
artists who now live in the United States reveal in their work layered identities. So do the African,
Caribbean and Asian artists living and working in London, and the Pacific, Caribbean and
African artists living and working in Paris. This swelling group also includes the many artists who
are refuges, self-designated or otherwise.
We are solidly in the era of the transnational artist. What is so interesting about Morrison,
Duval-Carrié and Bedia is that their work speaks to issues of their own cultural identity while
simultaneously invoking broader issues of migration and the fragile contemporary human
condition.
Each story Keith Morrison tells has a Jamaican element -- a personal anecdote about his life in a
country and a culture that thrives on stories and where storytelling is a celebrated art form. In
Jamaica there is a tradition which produces plays and "pantomime" full of words and raucous
laughter. [ 1 ]
Morrison often refers to his own "personal lexicon of myths and images," and no doubt his
Jamaican roots have a lot to do with the creations. Some of his imagery also has parallels in other Caribbean cultures. Although Morrison contends "I
don't try to make it Jamaican; I don't even think about Jamaica," he does acknowledge that many of the images are born of very basic experiences in
African diasporic culture.
Death is a recurring theme in a series that was exhibited at Bomani Gallery in San Francisco in spring 1996. As Morrison was explaining his fascination
with graves, I suggested that many of the themes he works with provide a type of exorcism, a way to recall and come to terms with his Jamaican
youth.
He often accompanied elderly relatives to funerals. In Jamaica funerals are a grand affair, an occasion not only to honor those who have passed on but
also to meet with seldom seen relatives and friends.
Morrison has written: "In the Caribbean a funeral is a wonderful pageantry of religion and supernatural spirits, a place where reality and fantasy
coexist." Remembering the festive occasion that accompanied his own mother's funeral, he says with a broad smile, "Basically, they launched her."
A Funeral Fit for Egypt is a powerful summary of Caribbean and African American humor. Here is the artist laughing at himself and his people. Yet this
laughter is filled with respect and perhaps some nostalgia. Morrison spent his youth participating in complex religious events (some on the sly, away
from family who would have disapproved), yet today he considers himself one of the least religious people he knows. He fills his paintings with biblical
references which perhaps should be regarded as literary rather than religious.
Morrison is well-versed in African American literature, and many of his paintings, such as A Funeral Fit for Egypt, comment on certain aspects of it.
Through-out the history of the African Diaspora important thinkers have used the image of Egypt to affirm black creativity and strength. Egypt as a
conceptual force and historical fact is at the core of both formal religion, such as rastafarianism, and popular culture.
In A Funeral Fit for Egypt icons of Egyptian tomb paintings adorn the ravaged buildings and tombstones. It is a grand celebration of death. Yet in the
center of the painting, above the terrestrial tale, a golden trumpet is Carriéd aloft in the talons of a green feathered tropical bird. I cannot help but think
of references to Gabriel merging references to Miles and Dizzy. I am even tempted to speculate that the lush tropical bird and the golden horn provide
a relief, an image of joy in the gritty decomposed city. Morrison is an urbane man yet his paintings depict the disintegration of the city and city life.
The artist also makes satirical reference to things Egyptian. Perhaps he is commenting on the fad for Egyptian images and replicas of artifacts and the
integral position of Egypt in Afrocentric philosophy. In the painting Crabs in a Pot a frieze of Egyptian-styled figures and animals decorate the
circumference of a clay pot in which dolls, a skeleton and crabs are cooked. This imagery ominously refers to the African American, "Crabs in a Barrel"
proverb. The maxim comes from Booker T. Washington's 1901 autobiography, Up From Slavery. According to the artist, "The pot is sometimes
my tableau where the futility of human turmoil and self destruction plays itself out, like burning bodies clawing over one another in a death
filled cauldron."
It is tempting to compare Morrison's art with Haitian painting. Most Haitian paintings also tell stories, and, to the uninitiated, the stories may
appear to be similar. Both contain references to death, to graveyards, to skeletons. But there is a big difference. Haitian paintings usually tell
similar stories of the Iwa, the gods of the Vodou religion. Haitian iconography is for the most part determined by Vodou or by Haitian history
and therein lies the challenge for younger contemporary Haitian artists. They must innovate on these standardized narratives. That is why
recent work of the Haitian painter Duval-Carrié is so potent. He has created a very personal, stylized version of the base iconography of Vodou,
metamorphosing the Iwa into haunting stylized actors.
Duval-Carrié creates complicated dramas that are as full and nuanced as Morrison's, although their stylistic strategies are quite different.
While Morrison's canvases are packed with figures, actions, and landscape, Duval-Carrié's are almost stark and static, even though the figures
are deliberately detailed and dramatic.
Both artists use lush Caribbean vegetation to assist in claiming place and moment, even though one is not quite sure which moment. For
example, Duval-Carrié's figures are often dressed in the style of 18th century France, recalling the period of the French Revolution. And at the
same time this style recalls the dress of the French colonials in Saint Domingue, soon to be renamed Haiti after the successful fight for
independence from France (1792-1804). Sometimes Duval-Carrié even uses the dress of the contemporary elite of Haiti, who live somewhere
between colonialism and its legacy, just as they may live somewhere between Haiti and Miami. And then he dresses the Iwa in these same
fashionable clothes, forcing the viewer to closely scrutinize the scene to figure out who is "real" and who is a spirit.
This approach is quite clear in a recent series of paintings, "Milocan ou La Migration Des Esprits." [ 2 ] The first panel is Le Depart (The
Departure). Naked humans are led away in chains, but they are painted in nonhuman colors, bright pinks, oranges, and turquoise. This is the
first hint we get that these "humans" may in fact also be something else, perhaps even the African spirits that make up the core of the Vodou
religion. These naked souls are chained to others, clothed and fancily dressed. One has a skeletal face and is wearing a jacket adorned with
what may be African style amulets -- little packets of power that also will be taken to the Americas with the captives. Here Duval-Carrié is
alerting us to the African sources of the Vodou religion and to the special esteem that is due the ancestors of the people of the African
Diaspora. In the background a tree with many branches and a human-like face in its trunk watches over the scene, and then we realize that
this tree too wears an iron collar and is also a prisoner.
The second panel La Traverse (The Crossing) obviously references the middle passage. The group of spirits are seated in a row boat, adrift on
a blue ocean. The "tree" accompanies them in the back of the boat and two of the branches have metamorphosed into human limbs and
hands, Duval-Carrié has placed the tree in the absolute center of the composition, a device that he has used frequently in other paintings. This
is a reference to the tree trunk-like center pole of Vodou, the "poteau mitan" which the Iwa descend during a Vodou service. In this narrative
the strength and spirituality of Africa are being transported to the Americas, albeit under horrendous circumstances.
Duval-Carrié has developed a singular style that reflects a poetry of ambiguity. His figures are flat, graphic and starkly painted. They are
deliberately posed, as if frozen in a particular scene, a part of a narrative. We see them in rich detail, can describe them in the minute detail
that Duval-Carrié offers, yet we cannot be sure if we are reading the narrative correctly, These bizarre, lushly colored actors perform a drama
that continues and repeats, much like the history of Haiti itself.
Since the early 1980s, when he first began to exhibit internationally, José Bedia has questioned both the role of religion in contemporary life
and his particular situation as a Cuban citizen. And because of his personal search for both spiritual and artistic stability, Bedia also has
straddled many worlds, some spiritual and some physical. Bedia's artistic vocabulary, literally in terms of written text and in terms of recurrent
imagery, is predicated on his life experiences, so that a certain basic level of biography is at least helpful in permitting a depth of appreciation
of his multi-layered work.
In 1983 José Bedia was initiated into the AfroCuban religion Palo Monte. During this time Bedia began working with a living religion and the
people who practice it.
For some artists the "popular culture" of non-European religious experience provides nothing more than certain elements to be manipulated,
thus relegating religious belief to a marginalized position within artistic production. But for Bedia, his religion and his collaborations with
other religious leaders and artists provide a foundation and a wellspring of aesthetic energy. While living in Cuba he was an active participant
in all events at the house of his Palo Monte Tata, or initiating sponsor. In his art Bedia reveals the multiple contexts of his own life and the
parallel layering (hybridity) of contemporary society.
Although known for his signature hand-painted large wall figures and accompanying floor installations, José Bedia's fall 1997 exhibition at
the George A. Adams Gallery, NYC, consisted of ten carved and painted object-ensembles, made from light weight pine, mounted on the
walls, and two handmade boxes resting on pedestals. In these new pieces there is a condensing of narrative. Bedia references the use of
miniature mass produced figurines and religious representations commonly associated with children's toys and religious altars and includes
these along with his own handmade objects. These constructions exhibit finely painted figures in stark outlines, juxtaposed with a recurring
depiction of specific trees, plants, animals, and objects, such as knives or machetes, used in his religious practice.
In these pieces Bedia has combined religious references with images of immigration and travel. Many of the objects are vehicles of physical
transportation, like boats and trucks. Here the metaphor for Bedia's own life is direct, for the reference is to both physical and metaphysical
movement. Both of these references are auto-biographical, for, as self-designated refugees, Bedia and this family have moved and Bedia
himself has been moved by his religious practice.
In a similar vein, the two small boxes hint at migration and faith, which is always portable. Para un Cubanito Viajero (For a Wandering Cuban)
is a hand-made toolbox constructed as a portable altar, consisting of three altar-like rooms which pay homage to the three major Afro-Cuban
faiths: Palo Monte, Santeria, and Espiritismo. Placed in the open lid are miniature statues of the most important gods of Afro-Cuban faith.
Although each is represented by a Catholic saint, all religious Cubans know that each saint is cross referenced with an African deity. For
example, the Brown Virgin is the Virgen de la Caridad de Cobre, the patron saint of Cuba, who is celebrated as the Afro-Cuban oricha Ochun.
Painted on the back of the other box is a swimmer positioned between two miniature wood ships, partially submerged in the water. One boat
is named "Cuba," the other "Habana," and both are sinking. A man on an inner tube is stranded in the vast ocean that encompasses and sinks
the boats. This composition is a reference to the balseros -- the Cuban refugees who flee on inner tubes, with perhaps only their faith to
sustain them.
These objects are deceptive, for Bedia has constructed miniaturized environments reminiscent of scenes that children build. Bedia worked
with his son Pepito to create these objects. But their content and subject matter belie their form, for serious content merges with brightly
painted toy-like objects. A related painting, Al Limité Posible (At the Extreme Edge, 1996), has a miniature inner tube attached to the canvas,
with the rope emerging from a painted depiction of Havana architecture set along the top perimeter of the canvas. In the blue ocean below,
Bedia has painted two eyes, one crying and one pierced by a sword. The latter references an oath taken by religious adepts who swear to keep
the faith. The crying eye again reminds us of the travails of the immigrant. During his years of travel the educated tourist José Bedia has seen
and collected crafts, but he knows well that these objects cannot substitute for the experience, tangible and heartfelt, of the immigrant and
believer.
FOOTNOTES
[ 1 ] Satirical drama in play and in song is a longtime Caribbean tradition. In Jamaica, comics have performed "pantomime" for decades. In the
1950s Morrison, while still a youngster, worked as an apprentice stage designer and later as a TV sound effects technician with some of the
great Jamaican comedians: Ranny Williams, Louise Bennett, and Charles Hyatt. [ Return to text ]
[ 2 ] "Milocan" is a Vodou word that refers to a spirit which is a collective entity. It's veve (sacred drawings) is composed of parts of the veve
and many different Iwa. [ Return to text ]
Judith Bettelheim, PhD, teaches art history at San Francisco State University. Bettelheim is an acclaimed scholar in the art of Africa and the African Diaspora, the Native Americas, and the Pacific.
Bettelheim is also a respected independent curator, and the author of numerous essays, catalogs and articles, including Caribbean Festival Arts: Each and Every Bit of Difference (with John W. Nunley;
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988). Bettelheim is also the editor of Cuban Festivals: An Illustrated Anthology (New York: Garland Publications, 1993).
www.keithmorrison.com
:: Duval Carrie: The Painter and His Commitment ::
by María LLuisa Borras
The city of Port-au-Prince stretches out in a sort of ascending initiation from the pestilential coastal area to the very top of the hill; from the
district of the pariahs and disinherited on whom 300 years of slavery still weigh heavily, up to the chosen, the elite who live in Petionville, the
summit, the top, from which can be seen unforgettable panoramic views of the horizon, filled with the profiles of the mountain ranges that
are outlined in black against the abundant warm light of dusk. And symbolically as well, the unfortunate and the privileged arc condemned
to go along together without losing sight of each other throughout the length of the twisting and narrow highway that winds its way from
hell to heaven, some in air-conditioned automobiles, prisoners in the enormous morass, impotently. honking their horns, while the others are
barefoot, walking freely along with their bundles on their heads and usually cheerful, thinking that the past was even worse. But both
advance at the same pace, some strangely joyful and the others impotent prisoners of their rage against the exasperating slowness.
He wears shorts and a t-shirt and speaks fluent Spanish, the product of the Puerto Rican education that he received when his family was
forced into exile by Duvalier. His tone is so convincing and warm that it is difficult to contradict him, especially since the tone is aided by a
steady gaze and a pair of strangely gray eyes. He is clearly a refined and cultivated man, and everything about his appearance and attitude
refutes the stereotype of the primitive Haitian, the typical naif painter.
He opens by talking about politics, about the irreconcilable differences of Haitian culture; it is the argument of an attentive and extremely lucid man.
D - Politicians have been taking advantage of religion and culture in order to keep the Haitian people in oppression. Despite the fact that
they belonged to hundreds of different tribes, as soon as the blacks were taken out of the slave ships they managed to join forces, which is
incomprehensible since they came from very different parts of Africa and because in addition to not knowing each other, they didn't even
have a common language. Upon arrival all the tribes began instinctively installing themselves in a cosmogony that no one could take away
from them and which miraculously, despite everything to the contrary, made them feel free. Life conditions in Haiti were -and are - so tragic
that the inhabitants have to look to the supernatural realm for balance. Spirits are the true representation of the people; the pantheon of their
gods was created in the image of man. What most interests me about voodoo is that it is the expression of those who hope to remain true to
themselves. And in addition, it has a political aspect. More than anything else, it is a religion for an oppressed people.
These are people who have always struggled, who were brought to Haiti as slaves and were enslaved for 300 years, at first exploited by the
French, who saw blacks as little more than cog in the production machinery which brought France unheard of economic power, and later by
the stupid, boorish Duvalier crowd. We are talking about a population of 7 million people, of whom 80% are more destitute now than when
they were 200 years ago. People who, as soon as they achieved their own freedom, were enslaved yet again.
B - You dealt with that episode in the Portrait of Toussaint L'Ouverture of 1989. L'Ouverture was the slave who wrote the first Haitian
constitution and died in a French prison after having risen up against the French attempt at restoring slavery, which had been abolished by
the Napoleonic army. In the painting, Toussaint L'Ouverture, his proclamation of liberty in hand, symbolically tramples a snake. I believe you
painted another portrait of him rowing a boat, surrounded by crocodiles.
Given the fact that you have almost always studied abroad, how familiar are you with Haitian history, which is so frequently reflected in your work?
D - In France I began seriously studying Haitian history, although I was limited to the Occidental point of view. The slaves obviously did not
bring any documents with them when they came to the island; all the documents dealing with the subject come from European sources. I
studied with enormous passion, hoping to revise history, every period of our history, all the ideas that had become stereotypes and cliches
under the exclusively European perspective.
B - Your painting interested me precisely because it criticized the European point of view. It seemed to me to be a translation, shifted to the
Haitian condition, of the problem of “Orientalism” as advanced by Edward Said: the Occidental vision created at the end of the 19th century,
a vision of a fake Arab world, of invincible warriors and houris. It had been nurtured by painting since Delacroix, who kept an arsenal of all
kinds of gear acquired from Parisian antique dealers which he used to compose his scenes of an apocryphal Islam which sadly still survives.
Your painting seemed to me as demythifying for Haiti as Said's text is for the Arab world.
D - It's curious that you should refer to Islam., since Haitian painting traditionally has been incorporating Arabic calligraphy, fascinating. No
one knows what it means, and it probably doesn't even reproduce phrases or words. The island received all sorts of African tribes and cultures
indiscriminately, and among the blacks there were also educated men who knew how to write. This calligraphy has lasted all these years as a
form that lacks meaning, eventually becoming yet another magical element.
B - To what extent do you consider that magic and politics are intermixed?
D - In Haiti, the mix is such that quite often it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. The leaders of this country typically resort to this
combination in order to keep the people in misery. Even a man like Aristide succumbed when hen lie found himself forced to use this type of
discourse in order to be able to communicate with the people. My work attempts to go deeper into these sorts of problems, which in fact are
not so simple to analyze.
B - It wouldn't be quite correct to say that you resemble what is usually considered to be a political person.
D - Despite the fact that I have supported Aristide, I am not interested in party politics. But I didn't sign the protest against the U.S.
intervention in Haiti because 1 was in favor of the intervention, but rather because I felt that something had to be done when the world
community at last had decided to intervene in favor of the Haitian people. I am neither a politician nor a crusader nor an activist. But I enjoy
when people say that my art speaks for me.
B - That is a phrase I have heard more than once, and which is based, I feel, in the fact that the painting, using parody, overflows with political,
cultural and social connotations. The commitment is occasionally fixed within a critical vision that extends from cynicism to Romanticism and
defines a certain cultural space where the past has its place but only as a function of the present as the purpose of reflection.
D - For my first exhibition in the prestigious Centre d'Art in Haiti, in 1980, I painted Portrait of Jean Claude Duvalier (the son and successor of
Papa Doc) in a wedding gown. But Francine Murat, the director, said to me 'If we exhibit this, well be thrown in jail.'
B - Yet I think that Le Nouveau Familier of 1968 was more powerful. with the image of the general who took control after the fall of Duvalier
dressed as Napoleon, gripping a machete.
D - The machete symbolizes the revolution of 1791. when the slaves revolted, gained their independence and gave the name of Haiti to the
western part of the island Hispaniola.
B - I also think that another powerful image is the 1980 Surprise Partie Chez Les Militaires, with its generals wearing their medals. The smallest
offers a pastry that is a map of Haiti, while the other shows the carte blanche that he possesses in order to distribute among the generals.
D - I was unable to exhibit it in Haiti until 1991, when Aristide came to power. In fact, I have lived more than 40 years away from Haiti. I spent
part of mv adolescence in Puerto Rico, where my father had to (lee from the oppression of Papa Doc, Francois Duvalier. In the 70's, my parents,
my sister and our brother Robert, who is a year older than I and who is an authentic political activist, returned to Haiti in order to reopen the
automobile-parts factory. Going back to our house in Port-au-Prince and continuing with my studies at the institute was a truly important
experience for me. But soon I had to go to New York in order to finish the last year of high school, and from there I went on to study at Loyola
and McGill universities.
B - Why do you say that your brother is an "authentic political activist?"
D - Because when he was in the University he was locked in prison for two years. Specific charges were never brought against him. other than
that he frequented circles that were opposed to Duvalier. When they told him he could go home, he had to wait six months until the sores
healed and he regained weight. I came back from the University of Montreal just as they were bringing him home and I decided that I was not
going to confine myself to just painting pretty pictures. When he was released from jail my brother formed an association of political
prisoners, in addition to editing a magazine that denounced the abuses of human rights.
B - How did you begin to paint?
D - Since I didn't dare tell my parents that I wanted to study art, I began with something more practical but not unrelated: urbanism. In order
to earn some spending money 1 worked in the gallery of a collector who even had work by Paul Klec. Almost without noticing, I began to
paint in my free time and I even exhibited in the gallery some paintings. They were quite Haitian in style, since I was as self-educated as the
primitive Haitian painters. Later I understood that for me. painting in that style was a way of searching for my roots.
B - In reality, distancing oneself physically from one's home country always involves a certain re-encounter, don't you think?
D - Yes. When I was studying in the University of Montreal in the 70’s, I felt homesick for the tropics, and for the first time ever I tried to paint
without thinking about painting, allowing myself to act on instinct as I made an effort to revive myths and history and a culture that I, despite
the distance, strangely and more than ever felt was my own. Thus arose the series of characters: saints, loas, heroes and ancestors, the
Duvalier clan and its guards, the awful Tonton Macoutes. Everything was mixed together: past and present, history and fantasy. As far as
technique was concerned. I tried to rescue the primitive Haitians, from Georges Liataud to Rigaud Benoit.
Later, in 1989, I was invited by the French Ministry of Cooperation to participate in the Bicentennial of the French Revolution - in a project
entitled "The French Revolution in the Tropics" - along with two other artists, one from Nantes and the other from Senegal. I had to move to
Paris for two years. I was able to attend the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts and they kept us in constant contact with historians,
anthropologists, geographers, ethnologists and others. I was quite interested and I was able to describe what life was like in Haiti in 1789 in
40 paintings that I exhibited in the Museum of Art from Africa and Oceania.
B - I still remember the impression that the series Roman Noir a Saint Domingue (1988) made on me. It was a sort of installation or drama in
various paintings that reflected the society of the time, with a central group formed by the Great White, the Little White holding a whip, the
Mulatta who seemed to be a princess and the black slave, who in fact was the one who worked and maintained the estate. Why Saint
Domingue?
D - Saint Domingue is the name the French colony laid before the Revolution, and that period is spoken of with great nostalgia in France.
B - What was the response in Paris?
D - I was well received by everyone, and in fact when the two years were finished I didn't return to Haiti but instead remained in Paris five more
years. I was married and had two children. However, Paris didn't interest me: the artistic scene seemed to me to be dominated by politics and
political dealers. In reality, I had never wanted to emigrate, and so we chose Miami for a variety of reasons. In the first place, the light. Paris is
gray, despite its reputation as the Ville Lumiere, and Miami has the type of light that I aim to capture. We were also drawn by the city's diversity
and the fact of being able to join the Haitians who, even while in exile, are preserving their identity and are concerned about the future of our
country. Miami was the first step in our return to Haiti, hut we have remained in Florida, seeing that even President Aristide has had to go into
exile. Also, the Haitian nucleus that we encountered upon arrival has been expanding and today represents a substantial sector of the
Caribbean re-encounter. I sensed that Miami would be the meeting point between the U.S. and the Caribbean and that I would be able to
some degree to play a part as a Haitian, joining those groups that are trying to do something based in Miami. Every day thousands of Haitians
leave the country and they aren't going to Santo Domingo or Caracas; they go to South Florida. Haiti's problems are experienced more
directly in Miami than anywhere else; in fact Miami seems like an extension of Haiti, and I think that the decisions that are made here have
some sort of repercussions in Haiti. What happens here, happens there. We have established the Association of Haitian Artists in America,
with Fredy Vieux-Brierre as president, and we have the Art Center in the neighborhood known as Little Haiti.
B - What is the importance of voodoo in your work?
D - Since voodoo worship is the soul of Haiti, which has always found its expression in art, the voodoo spirits are normally the protagonists in
my work and are represented in thousands of different ways. They can take on forms within the range of greens (as in The Wild Garden) or the
brilliant colors of the street. Voodoo brings a magical world into everyday reality, and when I paint the image of a voodoo spirit I think of the
people and of their capacity to be more than what they are.
B - How long have you been making sculpture?
D - Nexus, an art center in Atlanta, asked me to create a work about memory for the 1996 Olympic Games. I thought about the Mysteries that
summarize the entire Haitian cosmogony. They are ideas, concepts, abstractions that are impossible to define and; in contrast to the /loa, are
characters. I was interested in giving them shape, a kind of aide memoire, a reminder. In fact, the 30 bronze pieces that I made during those
three months are not characters, but rather are symbols. They were the basis for. the paintings I made that are currently being shown at the
Sixth Havana Biennial, which strangely coincides with the subject of memory.
B - That was in the summer, and for the Sao Paulo Biennial you exhibited the Voodoo Pantheon., which consisted of a group of sculptures.
Gerard Alexis, the director of the Museum of Modern Art in Port-au-Prince, stated that Wagol, Erzulie, Datod, the Greath Ahuiz, the Great Bois
des Islets and the Baron Samedi were not idols but in fact belonged to VeVe. What does that mean?
D - In Haiti the representation of the Loa or spirits is based on symbols called VeVe. These are graphic designs that are made on the floor with
flour or ashes, since the slaves were not allowed to carry out their worship and everything had to be clandestine and ephemeral. I had to
resort to artistic license in giving form to those gods, which are also known as "Mysteries".
B - How long have you been making sculpture?
D - In 1993 I was invited to participate in the First Festival of Voodoo Cultures that was held in the Republic of Benin (formerly Dahomey). I
created an installation of 23 sculptures, representing the Haitian folk spirits from the Congo. The statues of Oggun (the god of iron) and of
Papa Loko (the wild spirit) were like gods that showed the spirits of the Haitian dead the way back to their homeland, Africa. I also painted
three murals for the interior of the temple of Dagbo Hou Nou, who is the supreme spiritual leader of Ouidahque; is a very special place, one
of the ports from which the majority of the slaves embarked. I was quite moved by the thought that Ouidahque had been the last they had
seen of Africa. Dagbo asked me to make a portrait that, of course, no one has ever seen. One of the act during the festival was the "bathing
of the fetishes". They were brought out of the temple in a grand ceremony and were solemnly bathed before the public. This was the event
that inspired the canvas Mes Amis au Bain from 1993, which refers to the ceremony but changes it into a group of friends bathing themselves
in a modem bathtub.
B - Why do you always incorporate the frame into the painting?
D - In the frames I recover the voodoo aesthetic of appropriation and recovery of all kinds of arranged things, which are lent a magical role. A
Haitian temple is a fully occupied space, without even the walls painted as in a church.
The space itself is everything and every object has symbolic meaning, from the baby dolls that are transformed into symbols of the goddess
of love to Baron Samedi who is the symbol of death. I paint and decorate the frames with all kinds of clay objects that I make with molds.
Sometimes I incorporate small plastic animals or masks or hands, as if the frame were the entrance to a voodoo temple with all those objects
on the floor converted into objects of worship.
B - Does your painting take a certain satisfaction in primitive Haitian painting? For example, in the 1992 painting dedicated to Hicks?
I think that I am the only Haitian painter who has taken the baggage of folk art and has converted it into a contemporary idiom. That is why
people consider me an outlaw. I am not a primitive person, so that when Haitians saw my work they said "Why is he painting like a naif
painter?" And the treated me as if I were a traitor to the cause, although I've never knew what cause they meant. I only try to speak for myself
and for others like me, people who think for themselves. Someday, perhaps, we may join together and do something worthwhile.
Atlantica Revista de las Artes, 1997
December 2001
Vol.20 No.10
A publication of the International Sculpture Center
Miami Supports Miami
by Anne Barclay Morgan
In her article “In Miami, a Hot Spot of Art, the Temperature’s Rising” (The New York Times, Arts Section, September 16), Amei Wallach concludes that
“for this 15 minutes, at least, Miami is where the art is.” For young artists in particular, there have never been so many opportunities, with newly
created informal alternative spaces, new museum shows focusing on Miami artists, new galleries, new collectors,
and inexpensive studio spaces. Over the past year, Miami museums have shown a number of compelling
exhibitions featuring Miami artists. At the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in North Miami, Director Bonnie
Clearwater curated “Making Art in Miami, Travels in Hyperreality,” which opened on December 15, 2000. Of the 22
artists, Mark Handforth, Robert Chambers, Bert Rodriguez, John Espinosa, Cooper, and Westen Charles created
sculptures and installations that captured the vibrancy and quirkiness of the Miami art scene. Thoughtful and
thorough essays in an accompanying catalogue make a case for a Miami style. Clearwater supports Miami artists
by showing their work in the project space, as well as in the foyer and gift shop area. She has curated a remarkable
series of installations by Teresita Fernandez, Robert Chambers, and others. Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt
created an installation for the gift shop that featured miniature versions of their large projects, including M (An M
for Miami), commissioned by Miami-Dade Art in Public Places for the Riverwalk Metro Mover Station. Clearwater
also co-curated an innovative exhibition with the young Miami artists Bhakti Baxter, Martin Oppel, and Tao Rey,
called “The House” after a series of shows for emerging artists put on by this trio in their cracker-style house. Much
of the work responded to the architecture of the museum space.
This year, Art Basel offers an art fair in Miami (December 13–16). Most of Miami’s galleries and museums will be
hosting special events, including an exhibition by Miami artists in the Botanical Gardens in Miami Beach.
Under Director Suzanne Delahanty, the Miami Art Museum (MAM) in downtown Miami began developing a
permanent collection, with an emphasis on Miami artists. Last winter, Edouard Duval Carrié installed Migrations (2000–2001), an eloquent and
bewitching multi-media installation dedicated to Agoue, a water deity in the voodoo pantheon. In a bold and highly commendable move, MAM
also commissioned and exhibited new work from eight Miami artists in the year-long series “New Work Miami” (2001). The series of four exhibitions,
curated by Lorie Mertes and Amy Rosenblum, opened in February with installations by Robert Chambers and Frank Benson. At the opening,
Delahanty described Miami as having “one of the most vibrant artist communities in the United States.” The first space of Chamber’s installation,
illuminated by neon lights, featured fields of color controlled by a computer program, a giant dome that acted as a clock by revealing slits of light
projected onto the walls, and the sound of exhaling breath. Benson showed slickly crafted floor and wall pieces. Another highlight of the series was
Robert Thiele’s Zen-like installation of shaped canvases. Other artists in the series include Dara Friedman, Consuelo Castañeda, Adler Guerrier,
Naomi Fisher, and Glexis Novoa. MAM was also the first Miami institution to give José Bedia and Ruben Torres-Llorca exhibitions complete with
publications. In addition, Barbara Neijna and Miralda created new work for the project space. MAM will soon be publishing three volumes with
images and essays about all the work commissioned between 1996 and 2002.
Edouard Duval Carrié, The Last Boat, 2000.
Mixed media, installation view.
In January, the newly expanded Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach opened “Inside and Out,” a spectacular
outdoor sculpture exhibition. Curated by Kimberlee Cole, this year-long show includes new works by five
area artists, Carol Brown, Florencio Gelabert, Barbara Neijna, Bedia, and Chambers. Bedia created his first
outdoor work, a reclining male figure in a giant chain-link hammock. Chambers’s piece resembles a
planetarium dome that hums, dims, and glows on a seven-minute cycle, shifting from opaque to translucent
and responding to viewers’ manipulated voices. Neijna and Gelabert both created environmental works,
also lit from within at night. Brown installed a large aluminum work composed of writhing snake-like forms.
This annual exhibition will continue to include local, national, and international artists. The exhibition
“Globe>Miami<Island,” curated by Chambers for the Bass Museum’s new space designed by Arata Isozaki,
opens December 12. The show is conceived as a “large-scale laboratorium/ contemporary art installation”
with over 40 artists with ties to Miami.
With the creation of new art spaces and the expansion of existing institutions, Miami’s art scene has received
internatonal attention over the past five years. While much of the focus has been on bringing international
artists to Miami (in particular from the Caribbean and Latin America), attention is also being paid to local
Installation view of Robert Chambers’ work at the
artists even in the increasingly important area of the art fairs that have become a locus of energy on the
Miami Art Museum, 2001.
Miami scene (with Art Basel/Miami joining the annual Art Miami, held in January). Last year, in connection
with Art Miami, Fredric Snitzer organized “Departing Perspectives,” site-specific installations by 44 established and emerging Miami artists. The
show occupied eight floors of the former Espirito Santo Bank building in downtown Miami on the weekend of the art fair, and featured a special,
curated show of installations by Mark Handforth, Teresita Fernandez, Dara Friedman and others. “Departing Perspectives” generated a lot of
excitement because of the quality of the work and the experimentation by well-known artists moving in new directions. Carol Brown’s Domestic
Architecture, constructed of small pieces of wood and sound, dealt with the strife that can go on behind closed doors. In addition to her stitched
leaf columns suspended between floors, Karen Rifas transformed a room with piles of shredded paper. Westen Charles’s installation contained
a large zebra floating on undulating soap powder, while Carlos Betancourt put live birds in his darkened room. John Espinosa showed images of
explosions, while Luis Gispert included an audio of domestic violence. Eugenia Vargas transformed her space with soap bubble machines, and
Annie Wharton placed pastel circular forms on the walls. Mette Tommerup used inflatable dolls to mimic Matisse’s dancing women, Elizabeth
Withstandley piled up romance novels, and Charo Oquet filled her space with unpredictable reliquaries and altars. Among students from the New
World School of the Arts, Julian Picata, Jay Hines, and Bhakti Baxter made an atmospheric candlelit tent-like structure. Overall, this remarkable
exhibition was instrumental in depicting the vitality and liveliness of the growing Miami art scene.
Contemporary Miami art has also been put in perspective by historical overviews from the 1940s onward, an ongoing curatorial project of Lilia
Fontana at the Kendal Campus Gallery of Miami-Dade Community College. More recently, Robert Chambers was invited by the House artists, Bhakti
Baxter, Tao Rey, and Martin Oppel to curate “The Sears Building” in their space. Chambers invited 23 artists, then added 25 more and later another
20 to create installations, performances, and objects for the space. The opening on August 19 became a spontaneous
performance, not unlike the Happenings of the ’60s.
The institution that hsa most consistently supported Miami-based artists is the ArtCenter/South Florida, which provides
low-cost studio and exhibition space on trendy Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. With the recent sale of one of its buildings,
the ArtCenter is primed for expansion. During the tenure of former Executive Director Gary Knight, facilities were
expanded and renovated, and an innovative agreement was reached with a Walgreens store nearby, which provides Art
Center artists with changing window exhibition space. Negotiations are underway for similar contracts with other stores.
Artists-in-residence are now rejuried at the end of a three-year term with the possibility of a three-year extension. Artists
can apply for an space through a juried process.
The Bakehouse Art Complex, a nonprofit arts and education organization, is housed in a historic 1920s bakery. Located by
the interstate near North Miami, the complex houses low-rent studios, with 14 additional outdoor studio spaces planned,
exhibition and meeting spaces, and classrooms. This member-directed organization offers numerous programs, including
the Paul Abrams Sculptor Endowment Scholarship Project for an emerging, self-taught sculptor.
Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt,
M (An M for Miami).
View of public artwork at the Riverwalk
Metromover Station
As with many art communities, individual organizers represent a driving force. Dahlia Morgan, Director of the Florida
International University’s Art Museum, has been instrumental, arranging the long-term
loan of the Margulies outdoor sculpture collection to the campus. Morgan, who has
curated a broad array of exhibitions, held a solo show of José Bedia’s work in 1999. With the expansion plans for The
Art Museum and programming at the Lowe Museum of the University of Miami and at the Miami-Dade
Community College gallery spaces, there will be more opportunities for involvement by Miami artists in area
museums. Other exhibition spaces include the small Miami-Dade Cultural Resource Center in the lobby of the
Stephen P. Clark Center near MAM. The center also has an artist slide library available for visitors. The adjacent
Miami-Dade Public Library also hosts exhibitions with work by Miami artists and has a permanent collection.
Mia Gallery, directed by Yolanda Sanchez and funded by Miami-Dade County, opened in May 1999 in Concourse E
at the Miami International Airport. Its first major exhibition, “The Present Absent,” featured work by eight Miami
artists. A glass wall allows airport visitors to see works even when the gallery is closed. The New Gallery, which is
part of the University of Miami’s Department of Art and Art History, also provides space for Miami-based artists to
exhibit. It recently showed Cooper’s mixed-media installation Tone, Rinse (and) Repeat.
New commercial galleries have recently opened. Moving down from New York, Bernice Steinbaum opened her
new gallery near the Design District and began to promote dialogue among various segments of the art scene
Carol K. Brown, I’m Not Your Damn Maid, 2000.
Mixed media.
with an informative Web site: www.miamiartexchange.com, with listings and reviews. In addition, artists and art
world people can now meet in a new dealer space once a month for further dialogue. Steinbaum brought her stable of artists and also represents
Karen Rifas and Edouard Duval Carrié and exhibits work by other Miami artists. Other newly opened commercial galleries include Kevin Bruk Gallery
in the Design District.
Established gallerists have expanded their spaces. Fredric Snitzer incorporated a new project room
into his gallery near Coral Gables. Snitzer, who received an MFA in sculpture in 1977, has recently
begun to show the work of emerging artists who studied at Miami’s New World School of Art. He is
particularly excited by the energy of the students. He also feels that, for the first time, collectors and
curators from elsewhere are looking at Miami with interest. He feels that “there’s a real hunger” for
young Miami art, which “has never been the case.” He has also noticed a shift among collectors who
now “have a really serious interest in nurturing young artists.” Snitzer, who represents José Bedia, is
actively involved in supporting the Miami art scene. He feels, as many do, the vital importance of
creating new art-viewing audiences. Other galleries have moved. Genaro Ambrosino, who left a law
career to follow his passion for art, recently relocated from a large warehouse near Fredric Snitzer to
Installation view of John Espinosa’s work in the exhibition “Making Art in Miami:
an air-conditioned space opposite MOCA. While he shows well-known sculptors such as Carol
Travels in Hyperreality,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Brown and Barbara Neijna, he likes to nurture younger artists such as Florencio Gelabert and
William Cordova. In the late summer, Wendy Wischer and Nina Ferre’s collaborative installation opened at Ambrosino Gallery to much critical
acclaim. Ambrosino loves showing emerging artists, “because I can also buy the work myself.”
a large zebra floating on undulating soap powder, while Carlos Betancourt put live birds in his He
makes his gallery available for poetry readings, plays, music, and art performances, which allow
people to have a different approach to an art gallery. Moving to a new location 10 blocks north of
the Design District has provided the Barbara Gillman Gallery with 18-foot ceilings and lots of space.
Gillman, who shows Miami sculptors Peter Kuentzel, Claudia De Monte, and Ed McGowin, was
instrumental in supporting emerging Miami artists. Now she is able to represent even more. In
particular, her show of Robert Thiele opened concurrently with MAM’s exhibition of his new work
in May. The recently combined T. Curtsnoc Fine Arts and Seth Jason Beitler Fine Arts, in a new
location near MOCA, shows work by David Floyd and Kathleen Holmes. Even in Coral Gables, where
more traditional art predominates, Broman Fine Arts showed work by area artists in the group
show “Arte Actual,” curated by the director Manola Payares. A new arts district seems to be
Karen Rifas, Shred It, 2000. Shredder and paper, 8 x 20 x 18 ft.
emerging around the Design District. If intentions materialize, this would represent an
extraordinary new beginning for a more cohesive Miami art community. Gallery owners and alternative spaces have chosen this dilapidated area
because of its proximity to the Rubell Family Collection and the Margulies Photography Collection. The Rubells will be moving to a new location
near MOCA inNorth Miami, which is rapidly becoming another arts district.
Enterprising artists have opened their own exhibition spaces and created new spaces. For example, in memory of the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion,
George Sanchez created the giant installation Monumento on April 16th, 1999 in the old airplane hanger that was used for the invasion. A group of
Miami artists of largely Latin heritage concurrently exhibited in the group show “Art Gang” in a new space called the Warehouse, literally a
warehouse storage unit converted by owner Robert Bilbao, an art lover and collector. Nearby, the all-white Box: Forum For the Arts was started in
the late ’90s by three young artists, José Reyes, Leyden Rodriguez-Cassanova, and Manuel Angel Prieres. The small space shows mostly Miami artists
and is funded by participating artists. Artist-run galleries continue to open, such as Green Door Gallery, which showed the sculpture of Allysa
Browne and is committed to new work by younger artists.
The foremost example of artist-run initiatives is Locust Projects, one of a growing number of spaces near the Design District. Opened in May 1999,
the realization and expenses for renovating the space were undertaken by Westen Charles, Cooper,
and Elizabeth Withstandley.
The first of Miami’s new alternative art spaces to receive nonprofit status, Locust Projects has hosted
a mixed-media show by Charo Oquet and a mixed-media installation/performance about
dreaming by Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt. Around the corner, Brook Dorsch opened his
huge new alternative gallery space, The Dorsch Gallery, which he supports with his day job. He
gives artists free rein to experiment as in “Illumine,” with photographs by sculptor Wendy Wischer.
Also noteworthy are the series of “Home Shows” that artist Eugenia Vargas organized in her own
home. The House, opened by Baxter, Oppel, and Rey a few months before the show they curated at
MOCA, has also demonstrated great promise.
Barbara Neijna, Untitled, 2001. Mixed media, installed at the Bass Museum of Art..
Miami is well-known for its public art, and new projects include Jill Canady’s High Jinks for the Metro-Dade Animal Shelter, Michele Oka Doner’s A
Walk on the Beach, Phase 1 for the Miami airport, and Silvia Lizama’s Light Forms for the exhibition room of the Deering Estate. Carlos Betancourt
was also recently selected for a $600,000 commission at the airport. From December 2001 to April 2002 Miami Dade County will be festooned with
a temporary community-wide public art installation “Flamingos in Paradise.” Eight-foot-tall fiberglass flamingos will be transformed by area artists
selected by a Flamingo Review Community.
Peter Boswell, the Miami Art Museum’s Assistant Director for Programs/Senior Curator, noted a major strength of the Miami scene—that major
collectors also collect work by Miami artists. A few of Miami’s notable collectors are Paul and Estelle Berg, the de la Cruz’s, Craig and Ivelin Robins,
Ruth and Marvin Sackner, Ruth and Richard Shack, Marty Margulies, and the Rubells. Miami artists are finding innovative ways to grow and expand.
As Lorie Mertes of MAM says, “In the best scenario, artists working in Miami are seen in a number of
diverse venues over time, revealing and supporting their growth and development.”
Anne Barclay Morgan is a Florida-based writer and frequent contributor to Sculpture.
View of work of Jay Hines and Bhakti Baxter installed in Art Miami, 2000.
:: High and Low Art ::
Artist Interview - Edouard Duval Carrié
by LatinArt. com
LatinArt: How did you first become interested in incorporating popular/folk elements into your work?
Duval Carrié: I personally believe that most artists are in one way or another reflections of their immediate surroundings. What they are
confronted with on a daily routine is bound to affect and influence their personal visions of the world. This general tendency would simplify
my answers to inquiries on the relative importance of popular culture in the context of the contemporary art world. But with the advent of a
rapid globalization and the proliferation of information at all levels, this permits everyone, and particularly artists, to take their ideas from a
global well.
This phenomenon is particularly well exemplified in the music world, where artists in the medium find it quite exhilarating to plunder the
millennia of musical data from the global village and rehash it into quite surprising “new” creations. The same applies to the visual art world
that is seeing, and justly so, its preconceived barriers and standards tumbling one after another. Regionalism, concepts of center vs.
periphery, high and low art, are all ideas that are being reassessed due to the pressure exerted by a constant input of visual reference to larger
and larger numbers of individuals that in turn reappraise these references in ways not initially intended.
Of concern to me was my proximity to a culture that was relatively inaccessible even to me, who am from the region. I’m talking about the
popular expressions of Haíti, which though quite complex, are summed up in the mystifying word of Voodoo. Though the cultural pattern is
quite similar to many Latin American societies, Haíti has been singled out as an oddity. And an oddity it might be, because its early history
and subsequent isolation created patterns that are deeply rooted in old African concepts and world-views. Those are part of what I’ve been
looking at in my work and hopefully render less cryptic. My position as an artist has permitted me to look both from within and without a
situation that to most seems fraught with ambiguity and negativity, to say the least. But it is part of the global picture, and to remind others
of its existence, if only in art, serves to accentuate the pressures that only visual experiences can offer. I’m only partaking in a tendency that
seems to be global in intent, for this pattern is seen not only in Latin America but also in Africa and certainly in Asia. Cynics have attributed
this solely to an economic agenda, but looking at the phenomenon closely puts in evidence a genuine attempt to reach a certain consensus
in plurality; at least a certain coexistence.
LatinArt: What is your opinion about how our notion of what is “high” and “low” art has now become more ambiguous and increasingly
interchangeable than in the past?
Duval Carrié: The notions of north and south, far and near, high and low, in and out are constantly being reevaluated, for such notions do
painfully exist. It is undeniable that pervasive concepts such as the one of “high” culture are being questioned if not reassessed as convenient
marketing ploys. In today’s short attention span world, refinements of the effort seem to be superfluous if not totally out of sync. Artists find
themselves with freedoms they never thought possible, but in the end they are left much to their own device to interpret their worlds.
Traditions and folk-ways seem to come in handy at such times, and we find many artists appropriating the language of popular culture in
order to elaborate their creative construct.
In doing so, mechanisms that are used in the elaboration of what is considered as popular culture find their way into art forms that
sometimes can only be read because they contain these elements, making those art forms more accessible if only to the ones familiar with
those cultures. Ultimately, folk-ways and popular imagery have this resilient quality that makes them enduring facets of any given culture.
LatinArt: How will these changes continue to affect the future of contemporary art in Latin America, a region with a long tradition (both
past and present) of popular/folk art?
Duval Carrié: Many scholars claim that with the advent of globalization, artists (whether they are from the suburbs of Lagos, Kuala Lumpur
or Lima) have enough information at their disposal that enables them to create within what is defined as a “contemporary” format. To me, this
seems a just conclusion, but somewhat amiss of reality – yes, artists having access to this global net can partake in a creative process
governed by such rules, but the global configuration is far from being an all-inclusive one. The sad truth is that a much larger portion of the
globe’s population can be counted as “out,” and thus governed mainly by an amalgam of the culture that is based in folk ways and traditions,
in turn producing or evolving into popular cultures that in turn influence us artists. To me, this situation is a more just assessment of reality
today, though reflective of serious inequalities and injustices, and ultimately, a more salutary situation then the one envisaged in the bland
utopia of the global village.
:: Edouard Duval-Carrie at the Miami Art Museum and Bernice Steinbaum ::
by Paula Harper
Edouard Duval-Carrie was born in Haiti, but when he was a child, his family fled Papa Doc Duvalier's regime. He studied in Montreal and at
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris before moving to Miami. From this long perspective he explores the theme of "Migrations" in his new
paintings, sculptures and installations.
In Miami, migration is a major item on the evening news. Thousands of Cubans have arrived since the Mariel mass exodus, many in small,
makeshift rafts. Rickety boats loaded with desperate Haitians continue to be intercepted; the bodies of those who drown have washed up on
our beaches. Jose Bedia, one of the best known of Miami's Cuban emigre artists, obsessively fashions schematic compositions using
Afro-Cuban-Indian symbols to evoke his own transit from the Caribbean to the urban mainland. Duval-Carrie's version of the theme projects
not a personal narrative but his reflection, spiced with humor and political bite, on a long tradition of sacred images. He cheerfully
appropriates the traditional folk style of Haitian painters and the island's pantheon of Voudou gods and goddesses ("loas" in Creole), and he
uses both style and symbol to comment on political and cultural realities.
At the Miami Art Museum, Duval-Carrie created an installation that filled the New Work Gallery. It included a wall inspired by the
architectural format of a Renaissance altarpiece, inset with sculpted figures in niches and round, square and rectangular paintings, all of
modernized Voudou deities, which like the ancient gods can be seen as personifications of nature and of human types and temperaments.
Erzulie, for example, the Ioa of love akin to the Greek Aphrodite, is updated as a gaudy exotic nightclub dancer. This hybrid wall demonstrates
migration of styles and ideas; migration as the movement of peoples is evoked in the larger-than-life Ioas with flocked surfaces in hot colors
who sit disconsolately in a flotilla of wooden boats hanging in midair. They represent Baron Samedi, spirit of death and sex, Erzulie, spirit of
female power, and others. In Duval-Carrie's imagination, everyone is leaving a desolated Haiti, even her presiding spirits.
At Steinbaum, Duval-Carrie showed, along with a small installation, an explosive array of large, emblematic paintings in sea greens and
blues heated with Caribbean magentas, reds and oranges. The figures and symbols are as flat, frontal and linear as Byzantine icons; the
intricate floral backgrounds tame jungle vegetation into elegant patterns. In some compositions, Duval-Carrie includes a group of tiny palm
trees at the right of the image and on the left, a cluster of skyscrapers as the destination of the silhouetted boatload of migrants who traverse
the lonely space between.
Several paintings allude to the political and social history of Haiti. Confiserie Sucre Noir (Black Sugar Confections) refers to French' control
of the sugar industry through the importation and use of black slaves. It parodies the kind of picture that could advertise the brand name of
such a product on an 18th-century candy box. Against the background of a wallpaper pattern of repeated black heads, the black face in the
center, fixed in place by a lacy collar, hovers above a flowery hemisphere.
Duval-Carrie presents his canvases in wide, wooden frames that become part of the painting-as-object. Some frames show remnants of a
gold-leaf Rococo decoration (Duval-Carrie uses a stencil sold by Ralph Lauren to produce a "traditional" effect) on which layers of tropical
sea-blue resin encroach, studded with carved emblems like hearts, anchors, infants and Haiti's royal palm tree. His frames increase esthetic
distance, emphasize the artfulness of the images they contain and, like all of Dural-Carrie's pensively comic work, suggest the palimpsest of
history.
Art in America © 2001 Brant Publications, Inc. - © 2001 Gale Group
:: Spirit Travellers ::
Edward J. Sullivan
PAINTING BY EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIÉ
THE SUBJECT OF MIGRATION IS CENTRAL TO THE DISCOURSE OF MODERN AND contemporary art of the Caribbean. The spiritual and
aesthetic basis of the cultural expressions of the nations of this part of the world revolve around both forced and voluntary migration. Exile
and expatriation have found their way into concrete visual terms. The terrors of the Middle Passage, the journey of the enslaved from Africa
to the Caribbean, and the resulting trauma of bondage and servitude remain the central defining issue in the history of the islands. In
contemporary art migration takes on many appearances. In Cuban art of the 1960s and 70s, for example, the theme of migration as exile has
been fundamental to many artists. Luis Cruz Azaceta and Ana Mendieta, among others, expressed the trauma of obligatory banishment and
cultural transplantation. Exile and the consequences of re-location again became significant in work by Cuban artists in exile in the United
states after the Mariel crisis of the early 1980s. More recent Cuban art of the 1990s has focused once again upon this dilemma. Artists both
living on the island and working abroad have employed the image of the boat or the raft as a symbol of societal instability causing the need
for re-location and accommodation to unfamiliar and, at times, alien circumstances.
Cuban artists are not the ones to use the metaphor of travel and migration. Dominican artists have also depicted the water, rafts and boats in
their art to denote the equally tragic circumstances of the thousands who flee the island for both reasons of economic privation and societal
coercions. In Puerto Rican art of the 1980s and the 1990s the symbol of the airplane as
opposed to sea-going vessels is employed. The "air bridge" between San Juan and New
York links the two islands in both tangible and spiritual ways. Jamaican artists have also
dealt with the subject of split identities (including migration between the island and
England) to question the essential qualities of Caribbean identity. Haiti is a nation for
which migration and exile have played key roles in the formation of a contemporary
consciousness. The social upheavals of the 1990s are only the most recent
circumstances that have occasioned massive retreat from the island. Haitian-ness,
Haitian identity and Haitian cultural personality are by no means involved solely with
life on the island itself; the complexities of the country's personality have extended far
beyond its political borders. The constant flow back and forth between Port-au-Prince
and Brooklyn, Paris or Montreal is an essential factor in defining the realities and the
problems of the contemporary life of Haitians.
The art of Edouard Duval-Carrie is deeply rooted in this notion of migration, change,
reinvention and transformation. The vicissitudes of Haitian society and its shifts of
personality and values are integral to his vision of the world he inhabits. The artist
himself is an embodiment of alteration and transmutation. As a Haitian who has lived
and studied in France and Canada and who now resides in the United States (Miami), he
is acutely aware of the disorientations caused by migration. Duval-Carrie is also
conscious of the necessity of possibilities inherent in physical and spiritual journeys. His
work reflects a continual rumination on metamorphosis and its consequences. In his
paintings he deals with these themes in an allegorical form. The travels of the lwas, the
spiritual essences of voodoo, are the principal subjects of his recent images. In some of
these paintings, such as Migrations des Betes or Dambalah Di, Duval-Carrie addresses this theme directly, while in others the fluid
movements of the spirits are more broadly suggested.
In many ways the journey of the spirits across both time and cultures, may be understood as a metaphor for the peripatetic existence of the
artist himself. His affirmation of the vitality of voodoo, as both a religion and a way of life inside and outside of Haiti, is a testimony to one of
the most intimate and innate characteristics of himself as well as the culture from which he emerged. Voodoo, a religion of West African origin
into which Christian elements (saints, symbols and ritual) are interpolated, does not have a written theology. It is a religion which has
developed organically, shaping itself to the needs of the faithful and their circumstances. Voodoo is not a religion of the word but, rather, one
of images which have evolved over many generations. The visual language of voodoo is both concrete and abstract. The individual spirits
made the sea journey from the lands of the Fon, Yoruba and Ewe peoples in the lands around the Gulf of Benin with the slaves transported to
the New World. They came to the Antilles as well as to Brazil and were embraced with similar but varying names and attributes in islands such
as Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. Santeria shares these deities as well as many of Voodoo's ritual practices. While santeria is extremely
important in the Spanish-speaking nations among a wide cross section of the population, Haitian voodoo is, perhaps, more pervasive within
the totality of the various social strata of the nation. In Haiti voodoo developed in a particularly tenacious way after independence from
France was achieved and the French Catholic clergy departed.
Edouard Duval-Carrie's art acknowledges and affirms the steadfastness of the religion and its pervasive qualities, yet his paintings are by no
means religious icons. The artist deals with the essential personalities of voodoo (Erzulie Freda, Erzulie Dantor, Dambala, Baron Samedi,
Gede and others) as inevitable presences within the landscape — both visual and mental — of Haiti. In a manner that has been described as
"post modem" Duval-Carrie appropriates these lwas, yet he does not change their personalities and does not reconstruct their connotations.
He employs the figures of these deities as symbols of self realization and cultural affirmation. In his depictions of migrations he describes not
only the mythical journeys of the spirits from Africa to the Caribbean but suggests their pervasiveness in every site of the Haitian diaspora.
In the new paintings Duval-Carrie appropriates many formal qualities of the visual vocabulary of voodoo. Some of these paintings combine
semi-abstract, pattern-like forms ultimately derived from the traditional veve, a pattern drawn on the ground during voodoo ceremonies
with flour or coffee grounds which invokes the presence of the spirit or spirits. In addition, Duval-Carrie also forges his own critique of the
Haitian "naif" tradition. The most well known form of "modern" Haitian painting developed in the 1940s with the work of painters such as
Hector Hippolyte, Seneque Obin, Rigaud Benoit and others. These artists were reacting against an already established current of
European-based modernism in Haitian art that had emerged earlier. The early "naifs" (as well as the hundreds of others of varying levels of
accomplishment who have continued this tradition into the present) established a "voice" for Haitian art that was accepted with alacrity
throughout the Americas and Europe. Duval-Carrie's work represents an appropriation and a critique of this mode of artistic vision.
Duval-Carrie has always invested his art with a degree of irony and, often, an acerbic social criticism. Some of his well-known pieces, for
example, comment upon the lamentable socio-political injustices under the Duvalier regime. These pictures administer a caution to every
viewer, with their powerful visual metaphors, to carefully consider the essential qualities of Haitian existence and, by extension, of the human
condition. These paintings accomplish this goal by means of a high degree of imagination and inventiveness within the framework of a
resplendent palette, thought-provoking imagery and evocative depictions of the pervasive spirits of voodoo.
1. Reprinted from Da Migrations Sous L'eau — Generous Miracles Gallery.
:: The Landing ::
Edouard Duval-Carrié
THE WORK FEATURED ON THE FRONT COVER OF CALABASH CAN BE DESCRIBED as the precusor to an installation of some of my work
exhibited at the Miami Art Museum from October 26, 2000 through February 21, 2000, entitled "Migrations".
The piece is a thematic re-presentation of the forceful "voyage du non retour" (the voyage of no return) undertaken a few centuries back
by million of Africans who had only their gods and their memories as their stolen baggage. In "The Landing" my cast of characters are a
continuation of the theme of the experience of slavery and displacement, contained most forcefully in the horrors of the middle passage. The
characters predate and foreshadow another, newer middle passage in which we witness the disembarkment of waves of dislocated
immigrants to the inner coastline of Miami. In "The Landing" the cast is composed of a number of "loas" who, after a perilous crossing, fix their
attires so as to make a dignified "Entree sur scene". For the ones who know Miami, the site of that landing is none other than the island
causeway where pedestrians are not allowed. Thus begins another chapter in the story of identity interrogation that is the cultural
inheritance of many immigrant Caribbean groups. The conditions and possibly the causes of displacement may be different today, but these
events suggest that we are watching the replay of a kind of global politics in which Haitians constantly negotiate the physical space of
America that they are trying to call home.
But, you may say, all this talk is a talk of politics and an artist should be well cautioned to keep at bay that kind of poetry about which there
may be nothing poetic However, given the political disaster that Haiti represents today, I believe in the power of representation. I believe in
the way in which that power can contain and reverse the miscarriages within the political process that are taking place in Haiti. I have tried to
analyze the historical context of the genesis of my partial island nation by examining the strife and suffering that brought a society of slaves
and slave masters to the place where aggression and cruelty seem inevitable in my island home. How does a nation develop patterns that are
easily learned and extremely resilient to alteration? Those patterns referred to are those of extreme violence, the type that never looks back;
the type that finds a certain comfort in its inevitability. I have scrutinized the successive generation of tyrannical rulers, their sordid
entourages and the deepening hole of misery that they have dug for their adoring peasantry and urban masses.
In this particular piece, "The Landing", I use my art as a means to express my interest in the way that African culture intersects with and
empowers the culture of the Americas to produce the modern nations of the Caribbean and in particular the nation of Haiti. The fabulous
world of spirits: old and new, true and false, real and imagined, have made themselves felt at the different planes of social and cultural
consciousness that pervade the Caribbean. They come under many names: "Loas", "Espirits", or "Mysteres" and they all convey a strong sense
of intense empowerment which inspires the fabulous nature of their symbolism. Where will we find Erzulie Freda Dahomey, the goddess of
love? In the local Haitian communities as they struggle against their neo-colonial government? Or, is it possible that the fiery Ogun, god of
war and steel, might offer his services to the people of Haiti in their struggle against cultural imperialism? Perhaps, Azaka Medeh, thundering
hero, might join forces with the armies of migrant Haitians who come to live, labour and love in foreign cities like Montreal and Miami.
I constantly depict these characters because they come from a land similar to the land of the glaring sun in the tropics and they best can
represent the struggle of the Haitian people. One of their unique assets is that they are true to their origins and yet are willing partners in the
drama of Haitian identity-building. As points of focus they are excellent representatives of human frailties and qualities: greed, hate and
depravity constantly countered by love, courage and generosity. Those are some of the attributes which make them so endearing to me. I
have staged them over and over again and never tire of doing so. My characters, like all good actors, relish the risks involved in their
representation. They are timeless and adaptable, easily placed against a New York skyline or on a defiant raft headed into dangerous
Caribbean waters. They are simple and easily readable yet they represent the complex and multiple possibilities for Haitian personal
identification: from the destitute or the weary to the charming and mysterious, who are worthy protagonists of my artistic dramas.
:: Accent Miami magazine ::
Conversation with Edouard Duval Carrie
by Carlos de Villasante
The artist Edouard Duval Carrie was born in Haiti in 1954. When he was a. child, his family moved to Puerto Rico, and he later studied in
Canada and France. He has shown his work in places as far away as Africa and as close as Mexico. He lives in Miami.
Following is an edited version of a recent conversation with Duval Carrie. He spoke first about his relationship with Voodoo, addressing a
question on whether it was a celebratory relationship, or that of a critic.
Edouard Duval Carrie: Recently, I've been very involved with the situation in Haiti. There are all sorts of political and social upheaval down
there. For example, in the installation I did at the Miami Art Museum (October 2000-January 2001) I look at Voodoo as a celebration, but really
what I am trying to say in that one is that the spirits [gods or aiwas, in Voodoo) are jumping ship and leaving the island, you understand? It
might sound funny, the way I'm presenting it, they might look like cartoon characters. But really, it's very sad that Haiti is losing its soul. After
200 years, the island is still unable to cope with the legacy of slavery and its emancipation, etc. We are still rehashing the same kind of dialectic
we have for the past two centuries and in the meantime, you know, the whole environment has been destroyed...
Carlos de Villasante: You painted the aiwa of agriculture with one eye closed, maybe because with one eye shut he didn't see all the...
Edouard Duval Carrie: The whole problematic of the [environmental] situation. To show you how irreverent I am with those kinds of things.
Voodoo is a religion that is very much underground, even today, even in Haiti, where eighty to ninety percent of the population either
practices or acknowledges it or knows about it. It is still very much a poor man's kind of agricultural religion and very much underground,
because the political position of Haiti is that Voodoo should not be, you know. The Catholic religion is the only religion of the State of Haiti, to
show you how totally out of sync the government is with its people. Within Haiti, I am very subversive. They think I am totally crazy, but that
is my aim—to let it be known how complex it is and how rich it is, but also that these spirits are leaving Haiti. They are not going to Cuba,
they're mainly coming, like everybody else from Latin America, towards the United States, land of bounty and plenty. It is just to let people
know that these things exist, that there is this whole pantheon. People in Miami acknowledge it [Voodoo]. They know about it, and it's going
to be at least part of the configuration of the city, I don't say the United States, but at least the city. You should know who Erzuile [the aiwa of
love] is.
Carlos de Villasante: When you went to Africa and painted a Voodoo chapel there, you said that you wanted to build a huge Voodoo
cathedral in Haiti.
Edouard Duval Carrie: Yeah!
Carlos de Villasante: Could you see the work you are doing now as part of that?
Edouard Duval Carrie: Absolutely, and I think in due time this should be done, and maybe Haitians would evolve out of it, you understand.
It would be an established thing. It would be recognized. There would be canons established, there would be an intelligentsia formed.
Everybody would know about it, it would be out in the open and so I think it would be a plus. Doing something like that shows that there are
possibilities, and that it would be quite a rich kind of thing to do, visually.
Carlos de Villasante: The great thing about Voodoo is that it's a very personal religion. People generally bring their personal experiences to
Voodoo.
Edouard Duval Carrie: Absolutely!
Carlos de Villasante: And that is also what is so rich about your work, that you have reinterpreted Voodoo somewhat with a foreigner's eyes,
since you have lived in other countries and cultures.You come back to Haiti with a broader vision.
Edouard Duval Carrie: Yeah, and I'm reinterpreting it with different eyes than people there are accustomed to.But why is that? It is because
there are no canons...
Carlos de Villasante: Might institutionalizing Voodoo make another form of it go even further underground?
Edouard Duval Carrie: I think Haiti has other problems, you know...We are not going into the purity of Voodoo and this and that. I mean, to
me, it is a very vital kind of thing, and it has to be talked about. You understand that's all I am trying to get at. If it becomes stale in the future
because it has been institutionalized... You know, I find that the Vatican has become stale, but come in and look at what they have achieved
in the past millennium.
Carlos de Villasante: So you're saying that Voodoo also needs a political voice as an organization and as a representative of Haiti.
Edouard Duval Carrie: Absolutely, people should understand that. There was a candidate and a major figure of the opposition in Haiti; he is
very well bred, and he has studied here and there [in Haiti], and he is a friend [of the United States]. And he has not a due of what Voodoo is
all about.
Carlos de Villasante: People can be that disconnected there?
Edouard Duval Carrie: Yes. Especially if your family is totally against it, or if you have absolutely no interest. You know me, myself, it's because
I was brought [to Voodoo] and looked at it. Because if I was the classic member of my class group, or whatever you want to call it down there,
I should be totally uninterested in Voodoo. So to me, it's like going into something that would be as foreign to you. But of course, I have made
a lot of studies, and it is right there! So there is no way, I would have to be totally stupid, blind.
Carlos de Villasante: I would like to talk a bit about the Haitian community in Miami, not just how your work relates to it, but how you relate
to the work it produces. For instance, have you seen the murals at Tap Tap [the Haitian restaurant on South Beach]?
Edouard Duval Carrie: Yes, I did some of them.
Carlos de Villasante: Oh, you did!
Edouard Duval Carrie: Yeah.
Carlos de Villasante: Which ones did you do?
Edouard Duval Carrie: It's not finished but it is in the hallway. There are two of them.
Carlos de Villasante: So you know the young Haitian painters that are coming up through the ranks?
Edouard Duval Carrie: Yeah. To say that Haiti has a particular style of art, it's really a little concession to the world market, and how a
particular kind of Haitian work has reached the market, you understand. I took up that whole "tradition," which is only, say, twenty years old.
Carlos de Villasante: Which you helped re-invent.
Edouard Duval Carrie: That's what I was interested in. I was trying to get into my culture. This style is primitive. It's peasant art, and I was very
interested in it and that's where, you know... I fall from that. In Haiti there are people who were friends with Picasso and things like that. Within
our little history, there are things like that. Andre Breton was in Port au Prince, etc. There is some connection and in the end there are various
groups that evolved within Haiti. I am a very peculiar figure, because I should not be interested in [Voodoo]. People have a very difficult time
with me.
Carlos de Villasante: You do many different types of work; painting, sculpture, installation, and what are they called.. .starts, you make staffs.
Edouard Duval Carrie: Well, that's sculpture.
Carlos de Villasante: I see a recurrent face, or visage, in a lot of your works. It appears when you paint generals, mythic figures. Can you talk
a little about that?
Edouard Duval Carrie: This is a signature, I am not classical and I am not an easel painter.
Carlos de Villasante: I was just wondering ' more if they were different forms, or avatars of a certain social consciousness or state of mind...
Edouard Duval Carrie: I had a small retrospective in MARCO (the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterey, Mexico). The gallery had work
that I had not seen for a long time. Almost twenty years. But it was funny to see, from my first painting to the last one there, that the first one
looked like the last one.
Carlos de Villasante: So there is a consistency.
Edouard Duval Carrie: People think there is not, but there is.
Carlos de Villasante: What is beautiful, also, is how you do the frames of your pieces.
Edouard Duval Carrie: I think that started in France. It was really my contact with Africa that created that, you know, because of the
sculptural aspect, the symbolism it can add. Also, it is very baroque at the same time, and I am very interested in that, you can reinforce the
stylistic elements by just framing it, and I have never found anything on the market... I started a long time ago, my Hrst paintings were done
like that.
Carlos de Villasante: It is important that you've paid attention to not just controlling the canvas, but as you have said, "finishing the story."
Edouard Duval Carrie: Right, and closing it.
Carlos de Villasante: Giving it its context.
Edouard Duval Carrie: Its context, yeah, and not let anybody play with it.
Carlos de Villasante: Let's talk about the smaller works you have here.
Edouard Duval Carrie: These are related to the installation I did in New Orleans. I've 'always liked the recreation of things. In Haiti, it is very
prevalent, you know. They recuperate things that are from the United States or Europe in their own context, not understanding where they
are from. They are totally reinterpreted within the Haitian context. The Voodoo show that was here was quite amazing. They brought Voodoo
temples that are from now, and I mean, they are full of Star Wars figures, Darth Vader is now an Aiwa! It is totally reinterpreted! I decided, let
me try. And these works are an evolution of that. Most of the images that I've used inside, in the center, are totally derivative of African
sculptures. But you have to know where they are from. For example, there is a palace in Benin where they have a cycle of the proverbs, but
they are sculptural. It's really cool, and it's literally right here, [in these pieces]. But you don't know it, if I am not there to tell you.
Carlos de Villasante: It's a way of enriching...
Edouard Duval Carrie: And giving it context. If people know, they will say, "Oh, I know where he got that."
Carlos de Villasante: Right, you ripped it off.
Edouard Duval Carrie: I ripped it off!
Carlos de Villasante: "Appropriated."
Edouard Duval Carrie: "Appropriated," yeah, and really took it in!
Carlos de Villasante: You came up [in the art world] in the eighties, how do you see the larger art "scene" now as opposed to then? Do you
feel more freedom because there is less of an emphasis on the market?
Edouard Duval Carrie: I think the fact that the market collapsed, and that there is no real center, and there is no real authority anywhere,
that is lucky for all of us. To be able to express ourselves in a myriad of ways, like you want to, and not really have to contend with anything
[exterior]. I feel I am a good example of that. No, I am not a big news star, but I do exactly what I need to do. I have managed to get the means
to do this.
Carlos de Villasante: Not just your work, but also the way you've worked, is somewhat like Voodoo. You took a tradition, made it your own,
and slipped it in through the cracks.
Edouard Duval Carrie: Exactly, and I think that's fine. I don't see why I have to acquiesce to a critic in Berlin or in Paris. I mean, I find what they
say has value, but I find them as regional as I find myself a regional person. I tell them that, and they get furious. I say, "I find you provincial,
you're from Paris, your discourse does not hold three seconds in Miami or in LA. They would find you absolutely boring." And they go ahhhhh!!
There are no more centers. It's a bit dangerous because there is a whole group in Europe that might say, "Oh, there is a kid in Kinshasa, or Port
au Prince, or God knows where, who has exactly the same kind of information as anybody else in Paris. The information is there, and there is
no real regional kind of situation anymore." I say no matter how much information, there is a prism of the place you live in. Then they say, "Oh,
you are a determinist." I say no, it is not a question of determinism. It's a question of, the [regional prism]. If there wasn't, I mean, what's the
point?
Carlos de Villasante: Everyone would be homogenous.
Edouard Duval Carrie: Monochromatic.
Carlos de Villasante: So what do you think of the art scene in Miami?
Edouard Duval Carrie: I think Miami is a classic example to show there cannot be any one way. The ones who are really doing interesting
work arc the ones who say, "Okay, we cannot really have a line; let's try different things and give everybody a chance and hopefully..." I think
things will evolve.
Carlos de Villasante: There is a lot of energy here.
Edouard Duval Carrie: It's fabulous. It has to be grabbed on to. People are very interested in it, and what's more, the city is very proud of [its
artists]. I work with all sorts of people here, and they all brought their little cultures with them. And that is what makes me able to work with
them. You see this fellow, [a young man working away in the front of the studio] he is a carpenter, and his father was a carpenter and the way
he does things is totally foreign to me. Its like he brought his whole little [world]. I have another person who does my bronzes who comes
from Ecuador and his family was into that over there. And he is trying to set up a little business here, not trying to be big, you know, just trying
to do their little thing. The city is full of them, understand, I don't have to go to American companies and pay a fortune, right? There are
alternatives.
Carlos de Villasante: You were saying earlier some interesting things having to do with your relation to Voodoo...
Edouard Duval Carrie: I am very interested [in it] from many, many angles. First of all, from an affective level. It is what gets people kicking
in Haiti. And I've lived there and I've felt it, you know. Now on the intellectual level, I've looked through it very carefully because it's a very
difficult subject and it has been much maligned, not just by foreigners, and missionaries, but also by Haitians.
One has to remember that the big Voodoo priest was Duvalier himself. Thank God he was in Haiti, you know, a small place. If he had had a
little bigger arena to work with, he would have created havoc. He was the devil himself. But that's how politics appropriate religion at any
point in time, and this is why I work with it. You have the Spanish Inquisition, and all sorts of ways in which religions are used here and there;
so you cannot claim that Voodoo is anything else but that.
But it is interesting because, first of all, it has no canons yet, real established ones, and there is always an interesting interaction with the
community...
Carlos de Villasante: It's always in flux.
Edouard Duval Carrie: Exactly, and you are encouraged to be totally free and make images that are totally wild...
Carlos de Villasante is a painter living in Miami. His work is shown nationally and internationally, most recently at the 2001 New Orleans
Triennial. De Villasante was bom in Mexico City in 1971.
:: Spirited art from a mystical mind ::
Flavor magazine - Portfolio: Edouard Duval Carrié
by Paul Jerome
Haitian-born Miami artist Edouard Duval Carrié captures island superstitions and politics in poignantly irreverent art.
Heading east across N. Miami Av. away from the busy sidewalks of Little Haiti where loud speakers blare creole calypsos and vendors spill
out into the street is the more sedate side of the Caribbean -flavored enclave.
You're a few blocks west of snaking Biscayne Blvd. which divides the fortunate and fortuneless in this near-downtown section of Miami,
where eastward chi-chi high-rise condos hug the bay and the scarred old city to the west is the domain of mainly masses transplanted from
across the sea.
At the fringe of Little Haiti that's closer to Biscayne, gentrification is slowly transforming the weary real estate into worthwhile investments
as the bohemian set trickles away from the crowded South Beach barrier island for the city proper.
Edouard Duval Carrié is one of the early adopters to this nouveau plateau of Little Haiti. Duval Carrié probably has more reason than most
other Miami artists to suckle the neighborhood. He's Haitian, a mulatto of privileged heritage who wants to be as close to home as possible,
at least where his creative crib is concerned.
"This neighborhood is moving into a very interesting position," said
Duval Carrié. "Miami Beach has become saturated and overly done and
very expensive. Biscayne is becoming a new strip to go to."
He abandoned South Beach a few years back and last year he moved
into a 5,000-sq-ft converted auto repair shop with lofty ceilings where he
shares the space with another artist. He and his British-born wife and two
young boys still live at the beach, but for all intents and purposes the Little
Haiti studio is practically home for the 48-yr-old Haitian exile who came to
Miami from France nine years ago.
He spends most of his waking hours here, he tells a visitor as he gives a
tour of the sweeping studio space that leads through tall cathedral doors
into his living room - a crowded mini-gallery populated with sculpture,
collages, batik, paintings and a wild assortment of intriguing art on the
walls, floor, and under a glass coffee table. A narrow flight of stairs leads to
his loft office.
"I come here around 10 o'clock and I go have dinner with my family and I
come back until midnight," he said. "And if I don't have anything to do
with my family or other obligations, I even come here on Sunday."
Beginning in his teenage years, before the family fled the Papa Doc
Duvalier regime for Puerto Rico, Duval Carrié became drawn to visually
documenting island life and its superstitions. His oil on canvas and acrylic
works mockingly depict post-colonial existence in the former French
colony where most of the people are gripped in a full-nelson of stifling
poverty and voodoo superstitions.
A good measure of the Haitian art purveyed today could be classified as self-taught primitive interpretation of idyllic country life or sweet
scenes, boldly painted.
But Duval Carrié has never been part of that mold. He set out to give his paintings more meaning than just pigment prettily dabbled on
canvas.
He is trying to convey messages about the sense of tragedy and turmoil that Haitians either endure or flee. His works demonstrate how he
feels about Haiti and its relationship with the bigger world.
The visual storytelling pieces he paints are really several paintings within a painting, each telling in sometimes mystical fashion several stories
that he thinks are interconnected.
:A recurring theme is the escape of Haitians to the continental United States, so images of migration are part of the scene in a fair portion of
his work.
Many of his paintings have a decorative feel with elaborately enhanced frames that are colorfully sprinkled with collage-type elements, such
as small plastic figures and toys.
In the past 15 years, Duval Carrié has incorporated sculpture - bronze and plastic - to his paintings in creating colorful and elaborate
installation, as he calls them.
From a late summer 2002 interview that traversed a plethora of topics relating to art and life, Duval Carrie shares his unbridled viewpoints.
Q. At what point did it crystallize for you that you were becoming an artist?
A. There is a very famous place in Haiti called the Center of Art, which was established in the '50s and that's where most of the school for what
is called Haitian art evolved from. And since my early age I used to frequent it. I remember buying a little piece here and there as I grew up.
And I got to the point where I could not afford anymore so I decided I better do it myself (laughing).
Q. You're probably more known these days for dramatic sculptures that have very African motifs and came out during the Olympics.
A. That was a very peculiar story. They invited me to participate in 1996 at the Olympics so I decided to bring the whole voodoo pantheon to
Atlanta to meet their cousins. It was like an unprecedented chance to do so (laughs).
So what I did was take the format of those very prestigious and those very
spectacular Roman bronzes and evolved from there. It was like a wall of
sculptures and they were like on little pedestals. I did about 30 different
ones in bronze. It's a noble material. I had never done it and I decided to
just launch myself in making those deities.
Q. There's a mystical and spiritual quality to your work. Explain that?
A. They represent basic humanity. It's a projection into the universal, of
human frailties, of human fears. It's like a synthesis of what we are all
about. My characters are not like Christian gods, omnipotent and perfect.
They are more like the Roman gods who had frailties and they love and
hate and punish and get punished. I have put this whole cast of gods as
boat people, living in Haiti or here in Miami trying to adapt, gods being
common people.
Q. Where do you get your ideas?
A. Sometimes I have visions, but mainly it's like an elaboration of a theme.
How am I going to discuss in a very visual poetic way very simple political
or social problems and mask them so that only when people get into it do
they get the whole story. I don't like propaganda; to me it's anathema. I try
to do it in a more poetic way.
Q. You 're here almost every day?
A. Almost every day.
Q. Do you have to be here everyday?
A. I don't have to be anywhere. (Laughs.)
Q. So it's a passion.
A. Absolutely. It's a passion. It's like something driving me sometimes.
"Erzulie's Boat"
Q. Where are you gravitating to these days? More sculpture or painting?
A. My work is not an easy task. I have to live off of it. So I have to be satisfying people here, people there. Sometimes I block people out and
say I will do something that I am really interested in working on, which is what I have just done. I just finished a big installation for a show in
Phoenix and I did huge pieces for them. But people have been bothering me with assignments and commissions.
Q. What percentage of your work is commission?
A. Oh, not very much. Maybe 25:75. I like to do my work and take chances. If people like it and buy it, wonderful. If not, I am stuck with it.
(Laughs.) And it doesn't matter. To me it's the process that counts. It's not what happens to the piece. Sometimes, I discard them. I like to
pursue my ideas and get it to the point where I want it. Once the painting is done, I am totally uninterested. I make sure that it is
photographed and catalogued, but it is the process that drives me.
Q. And your production in a given year?
A. I create two to three bodies of work because I have at least one to three exhibits of caliber a year, possibly at a museum. And I like to create
new work. I did a floor for a museum which was 30 by 40 feet and you could walk on it. It's a water scene. You can walk on it. It is made of wood
and covered with a plastic resin. It was painted like a mosaic for a floor. It's like walking on water. The theme was the lore of underwater spirits.
In the African culture every thing moves under water contrary to the Western culture in which (everything) goes in the cosmos. There are a
lot of water spirits. In Haiti, for example, every five to 10 years they have these huge ceremonies to send the spirits back to Africa, they reunite
the dead people and then they ship them underwater.
Q. Why is your work in such high demand?
A. Collectors come to it for the visual characteristic of the work. It's a magical thing that happens between whoever looks at the work. What
they get out of it is a sociopolitical agenda which is of some worth. They feel this guy has an agenda and systematically he's exploring it. So
the collectors respect that because there is a commitment to that. Consistently I come back to the core idea and it's always somewhere
present in the work. At a critical level they respect that because there is a continuity and a seriousness and apart from the work whatever
aesthetic value it has.
Q. What does your work cost?
A. From $2,000 to $25,000. I am still manageable. I am not one of those stars and I don't think I will ever be because my work is very specific
and anchored. I am not treading on being a novelty or the latest thing in the avenue.
All I ask is for people to give me the means to continue. I don't want to become rich, I don't want to become famous, I don't care about all
that. I want to make sure that I leave a body of work or constitute a body of work which will have a certain coherence to it and it will be my
life story. I am very clear about that and very systematic about it.
Q. Why did you choose Miami?
A. I think Miami is a very particular place. It's a young city and it's going to be more and more confronted with its role as a lighthouse for the
area. More and more the destinies of what's happening in the Caribbean, especially, are going to be decided here. Haiti's archaic culture for
example meets the New World and it's very interesting for me to see what's happening on that level... how Haitians are adapting in the United
States, what are they achieving or not achieving and what they are sending back. There is still a correlation, it's half an hour away by plane.
There's Little Haiti. New York has about four times more Haitians than Miami, but here it means something.
Q. What kind of literature do you feel drawn to?
A. I like world novels. I love Latin American literature, some Caribbean (I don't think they are there yet). I love Arabic and Indian modern
literature. I mean Salmon Rushdie, people like that. I identify with them. I can read their stories and I relish it because I learn a lot from their
point of view, how they are reacting to this globalization which I am feeling.
I enjoy John Updike and all these modem writers. Yes, they write very well and I get the gist of the story, but they don't engage me or I don't
get totally captivated like when I read Rushdie or Garcia Marquez.
Q. Any blindsiding moments that taught you a lesson?
A. Yes. It was when my brother went back to Haiti and got arrested and put in prison for a year and a half. I was in Canada at the university in
my early 20s. I was barred from going to Haiti because my parents were scared that I would suffer the same fate. I realized that things are
serious in this world and you don't fool around. It was a political thing. That really shocked me to the point that I realized that the world is not
an easy place and one has to be very careful about what ones does, politically and socially and not be frivolous.*
Haitian artist Edouard Duval-Carrie exhumes memories of his homeland
By Matt Schudel
Arts Writer June 22, 2003
Edouard Duval-Carrié left his native Haiti more than 25 years ago, but Haiti has never left him. Now settled in Miami, Duval-Carrié has studied
and lived all over the world, yet his troubled homeland in the Caribbean continues to be the inspiration for his art.
He doesn't record the everyday events of Haiti in a documentary sense, and his work is nothing like the simple, brightly colored scenes of
peasant life that have become numbingly familiar in recent years. Rather, Duval-Carrié searches his own memory and imagination to create
a private cosmography derived from the Haitian experience.
The many forms of his vision can be seen in "Edouard Duval-Carrié: Endless Passage," through Sept. 7 at
the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami. Organized by the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, this
mid-career examination of Duval-Carrié's achievement is the most extensive showing of his art so far in
South Florida.
Despite its variety -- there are paintings, sculptures, lacquered wooden tiles, modern-day altarpieces
and reliquaries -- no one would ever mistake Duval-Carrié's art for that of anyone else. There is nothing
detached or ironic about it. His aim is to preserve the soul of Haiti, no matter how tortured it may be.
You could call it a fixation or obsession, or you could call it a need to express the longings, sorrows and
hopes of his poor, blood-stained island nation.
One of the most impressive works in "Endless Passage" is a triptych in the form of a classic altarpiece.
The central panel of Trois Feuilles (Three Leaves) shows a trio of figures from Duval-Carrié's personal
pantheon. They rise one above the other, in shades of blue, red and tan, sprouting leaves in place of hair.
Niches cut out of the surface of the altarpiece reveal tropical scenes, masks, grimacing faces and images
of hearts. Gold-painted palm trees are carved into the side panels, and pointed objects (bullets,
perhaps?) pierce the surface.
The precise meanings may not always be clear, but there's no mistaking the general drift: Duval-Carrié
has merged the pagan beliefs of Haitian voodoo (or vodou or vaudou, as it's sometimes spelled) with
the staid traditions of Western art. As if to say that one system of faith isn't superior to another, he has
made a series of 16 bronze staffs with voodoo symbols that resemble the golden crosiers of the Catholic
church. In a series of eight bronze sculptures, he has given the gods of voodoo as much stature as saints on stained glass windows.
A monumental series of four paintings that depict the indelible curse of slavery, The Migration of the Spirits, invokes imagery that is somewhere between the Bible and The Wizard of Oz. An elegant series of 12 lacquered floor panels from 2002, The True Story of the Water Spirits,
is really a memorial to the souls lost in the Middle Passage.
Like Haiti itself, Duval-Carrié's art is a colorful, ever-evolving blend of European, African and Caribbean influences. He creates his own
symbolic universe, in which boats can be the instruments of either freedom or doom. Again and again, he shows human figures -- sometimes
with crosses or animal heads in place of their faces -- sailing toward an uncertain destiny. Death, in the form of disguised skeletons, is a
constant companion.
Occasionally, Duval-Carrié lifts the symbolic veil and makes his meaning overt. His Incident in a Garden (1993), in which seven military figures
with piglike faces stand over the decapitated heads of dissidents, is plainly an indictment of the brutal Tontons Macoute militia that terrorized
the nation. Mardi Gras at Fort Dimanche (1992) refers to a notorious prison where Duval-Carrié's brother was held in the 1980s as a subversive.
In this scathingly satirical painting, Haiti's onetime dictator, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, is dressed as a gun-toting bride, surrounded by
accomplices -- fashionably dressed women, a priest, a military officer, and a mysterious figure in a suit -- all wearing dark glasses.
Duval-Carrié is a powerful artist with an original vision, yet he may not be for everyone. If it's elegance, restraint, and sure-handed skill with a
paintbrush that you want, then you're looking in the wrong place. He's an artist who plays endless variations on the same themes -- though
it should be noted some of his recent works, incorporating flowers, leaves and fruits with painting, seem to have little to do with Haitian
politics or history.
An artist should be appreciated for what he is, rather than for what he is not. And what you need to remember about Edouard Duval-Carrié
is that, no matter how long he has been away from his homeland, he carries the wounded soul of Haiti within his heart, and within his art.
Go back to previous page
Matt Schudel can be reached at [email protected] or 954-356-4689.
Copyright © 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
:: GLOBAL CROSSING ::
Unfolding this month at the Lowe Art Museum is a tale of two painters enthralled by African art.
For one, Adolph Gottlieb, such a fascination impelled him to create his own language of stripped-down forms. Then he boxed these sleek
little circles and spirals into that stylish grid beloved by Modernists everywhere, as well as by graphic designers in thrall to Martha Stewart.
For the other, Edouard Duval-Carrie, the arts of Africa are part of a messy Caribbean mélange that becomes ever more complicated and
dangerous. The Beginning of Seeing: Adolph Gottlieb and Tribal Art at the Lowe, incorporates paintings from the '40s and early '50s and
catches the artist on his way up, before he has reached the signature forms of his career.
Gottlieb (1903-1974) was a seminal American Abstract Expressionist who began collecting tribal art objects in the '30s. The so-called "burst"
paintings of his final years, produced mainly in the '60s, condense the disembodied eyes he appropriated from African masks and other
non-Western art into a single, fiery explosion of color with the apocalyptic overtones of a nuclear holocaust.
Edouard Duval-Carrie: Endless Passage, also at the Lowe, is a midcareer retrospective of sculpture and painting by Duval-Carrie, a
Miami-based artist born in Haiti. Deeply entwined throughout his art are the myths and arresting Creole aesthetic of Haitian Vodou.
This New World religion has been stained by the bloodied history of the Middle Passage slave trade, but it has also been fed by a stream or
astonishingly varied cultural icons, from the luridly lifelike painted statues of saints at Roman Catholic altars to Masonic insignia to West
African temple paintings.
MIGRATION
Unlike Gottlieb, however, Duval-Carrie has a first-hand link to the transformations African art has undergone in its passage to the New World.
He is especially taken with the ritual story-telling power these objects possess.
For him, the most pressing master narrative is migration, an apparently endless passing from one place to another, a journey that can chart
departure points and destinations in Africa, Haiti and the United States. In his solo show at the Miami Art Museum three years ago, he
presented a tour- de-force installation, called Migrations, that was part Vodou temple and part Catholic chapel.
Though it reveled in the gorgeous sparkling surfaces of sequined Haitian Vodou Hags, this work — with its painting of one Vodou spirit
morphed into an exotic SoBe dancer — was also fraught with tragedy. It showed that even spirits were leaving an island mired in fatal
desperation, fleeing the legacy of leaders he has described as running the gamut from "operetta emperor to demented shaman."
Mardi Gras au Fort Dimanche is an especially caustic stab at the Duvalier dictatorship. Duval-Carrie's gripping four-part series of paintings
now at the Lowe, and on loan from the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, also describes that passage of migration with an accuracy both
fanciful and frightening.
In the brilliant sun drenched colors and relatively flat perspective of tourist-friendly Caribbean landscape paintings, this series, Miloucan on
La Migration des Esprits, is arranged to occupy one vast wall in the museum. They aspire to the grandeur of Old Master paintings in a
cathedral, and their scenes of capture, escape and paradise despoiled resonate with Biblical urgency.
During the '50s, Duval-Carrie grew up in an upper-class family typically disdainful of Vodou, but one that also looked the other way when
maids appropriated leftover bottles of Anais Anais perfume for pink cake-and-candle stocked altars to the Vodou deity Erzulie.
"Everybody's aware of it," says Duval-Carrie in an interview in his Design District studio. "Even the priests that come from Europe. That's the
first thing they find out, that there's this whole world of the spirits."
As the brutalities of the Duvalier regime increased, Duval-Carrie's family fled to Puerto Rico, where he spent his teenage years, though his
father kept the family business going in Port-au-Prince, and as an artist Duval-Carrie has returned to the island frequently.
His sumptuously layered and colored paintings are a grand mix of history, religion and decorative arts. They offer a startling blend of
transplanted West African religious lore and 18th-century French rococo, all marbled with tropical colors and grafted onto modern-day
stories of corruption and displacement among vistas shaded by the Haitian royal palm.
AFRICAN TIES
Erzulie, a coquettish figure the artist has painted and sculpted frequently, may be a not-so-distant cousin to a Fon deity from modern-day
Nigeria, a figure that's a quixotic combination of motherhood and sorcery. Scholars have looked at other threads connecting Haitian Vodou
figures like Danbala — a serpentine spirit lushly redolent of water, wisdom and rainbows — with West African deities and they've discovered
many family ties.
It's also possible that lwa, the Creole word for Vodou spirits, carries linguistic links to the Fon world of "lo" for "mystery," and to the West African
Yoruba word "lawo,” meaning "secret."
Erzulie is "a totally Haitian spirit," says Duval-Came, "but you can see how French she is. She's the goddess or love, the mulatto woman born
out of the illicit relationship between the master and slave."
However you parse the West African bloodlines of Haitian Vodou and their passage into Duval-Carrie's painting and sculpture, it's Vodou's
syncretic layering of colors and design and sacred and secular sources that are making the most emphatic stamp on Duval-Carrie's art.
QUIET BEAUTY
The Beginning of Seeing:Tribal Art and the Pictographs of Adolph Gottlieb is a smaller, quieter show, in which narrative is gently suppressed
in the favor of cool formal patterns, that the artist often likened to inscriptions or missives that would speak to the spirit rather than the mind.
Many of the streamlined shapes he adapts from tribal art are encased in a slightly uneven grid, to create what he called "pictographs." He
found precedents for this grid from such divergent examples as paintings by Piet Mondrian and the cellular-like ribbon of forms woven in
blankets by tribes of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
Giving this show its added eloquence are examples from the Lowe's permanent collection, especially Gottlieb's New York Night Scene, a
wonderfully concise painting that splices pillars of skyscraper strips of color with the earthy, slightly ragged geometries of tribal art.
Posted on Sun, Jul. 20, 2003
Elisa Turner is The Herald's art critic.
[email protected]
Voodoo Daddy
Artist paints Haiti's history
BY DEBORAH SUSSMAN SUSSER
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/
As a teenager in Haiti, Edouard Duval-Carrié spent a lot of time hanging around artists. "I was fascinated by what they were doing," Duval says now.
"Things have gone not very well since, but there was a period in Haiti when art was quite glorious."
The lost promise that Duval hints at in conversation is palpable in "Endless Passage," a survey of his work at the Phoenix Art Museum. Duval works
the lush Caribbean palette on a grand scale to tell Haiti's wrenching history, and the results are both seductive and instructive: See the decorative
historic image of the slave trade. And what appears to be a series of red ovals in the background of
an elaborate canvas marked Sucre Noir, or Black Sugar, turns out, up close, to be a pattern of blank,
almost skull-like faces. These rich paintings (along with two superb small bronzes and a large
glowing orange sculpture of a head) will draw you in and then school you, hard.
courtesy of Phoenix Art Museum
voodoo liturgy in his work; unlike Hyppolite, Duval comes from an educated background and
studied art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. (Duval spent more time at the Louvre than he did
casting methods with which he makes his extraordinary frames.)
work that makes it so resonant. "To me," Duval says, "voodoo is like the essence of the Haitian
culture. But it's been totally maligned over the years, not only abroad but inside Haiti as well. That
I was emulating it was not very much liked at all, even by other artists." He laughs. "Now that I'm a
little bit more established, they're reconsidering."
Although Duval has exhibited in Latin America, Mexico and Europe, the show at the Phoenix Art
the show together and getting it on the road; before coming to Phoenix, Roberts worked at the
Davenport Museum in Iowa, which, improbable as it may seem, houses the largest collection of
Haitian art in the country.
Erzulie, goddess of love, one of the spirits in Edouard Duval-Carrié's
Duval, who has lived in Montreal as well as Paris, San Juan, and Port-au-Prince, once hoped that the 1996 series Milocan ou La Migration des Esprits.
situation in Haiti would improve enough that he could return. Now, at the age of 48, he calls Miami home. "I'm an American citizen right now, but
I'm always interested in the other," he says. "It's very important that we do that here in this country: look elsewhere."
phoenixnewtimes.com | originally published: January 2, 2003
:: Diaspora: The trajectory of a Haitian artist ::
by Lilia Fontana
Edouard Duval Carrie was born in Haiti in 1954 and was educated at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris, McGill University,
the University of Montreal, Quebec, and holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Loyola in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is currently a
resident of Miami Beach, Florida. He has had numerous exhibitions in various venues throughout the Americas as well as Europe, and his
works are in collections, among them, the Davenport Museum of Art, Iowa, Miami Art Museum, Florida, Musee des Arts Africains et
Oceaniens, Paris, Musee du Pantheon National Haitien, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Mexico, and The
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan. Arts International awarded him a
residency for the Foundation Claude Monet, Giverny, France in 1988
and in 2000 he was awarded a residency at the Cite Internationale des
Arts in Paris by the Maine de Paris.
He has been the recipient of the Southern Arts Federation Visual Art
Fellowship and the South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual Art
Fellowship. In 1996, he fulfilled an Art in Public Places commission for
the Jefferson Reaves Rehabilitative and Health Center in Miami. He is
currently working with six students apprentices to create a landmark
public sculpture at an economically marginal community in
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
"Endless Passage" is the title of the exhibition of Edouard Duval Carrie
at The Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami. The exhibit has
been organized by the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona and will run in
Miami through September 7, 2003. It is an interesting compilation of
this artist's work from the last decade. Though short of a retrospective,
the exhibit does provide a glance at the evolution of this multi-faceted
artist through sculptures, paintings, and installations.
Duval Carrie's iconography is best understood through the
multi-leveled phenomena of all emigres in a new land. He combines
the cultural, religious, and social matrix of the Haitian experience,
creating a hybrid vocabulary rich in Haitian "Nafve" traditions. He
mixes the storytelling folklore from the African Diaspora and
juxtaposes it within Post Modern terms. His work is a potent cultural
instrument recording rituals, protocols, and myths. Duval Carrie gives
birth to a unified human experience with a new consciousness. Early
Duval Carrie's are tongue-in-cheek works with socio-political
commentaries. They created his forum to judge and criticize the
Duvalier father and son sanguinary regimes. It is seem in the piece
"Mardi Gras au Fort Dimanche." The artist places "Baby Doc" Duvalier in
the center of the canvas dressed in a wedding gown and holding a
gun, surrounded by an array of characters from Haitian society. The ladies are adorned with gold, red lips, fancy clothes and pumps. The
entourage also includes a Cardinal, a skeleton in a fancy suit, a cross-dresser carrying a basket with a hand coming out, and a military man;
all, except Baby Doc, are wearing sunglasses. The skeleton has his hand around the dictator's neck. They are placed within a room outside a
notorious prison where the Duvaliers tortured and killed their opponents. Hands dripping blood are nailed all over the wall. Above them is a
small barred window in the center of the wall that depicts the lush tropical landscape of Haiti. Rich in symbolism, the artist plays with the
somber tones of the group and juxtaposes them against the bright greens and blue skies seen through the window, as if saying Haiti will
prevail no matter what.
Duval Carrie's work could not be completed without the ingredients of the island's Voodoo religion: practiced primarily by peasants, but
influencing every fiber of Haitian society. Voodoo has established in his work a pictorial vocabulary with an abundance of iconographic
symbols. It is seen in works like "Dantor," a lit plastic giant sculpted head approximately 90 by 48 by 48 inches that greets the spectator at the
entrance of the exhibition. It is a simulacrum of a "Voodoo goddess in a large headdress with babies protruding from the head and eyes,
suggesting a fertility goddess. Along with this piece is one titled "River Snakes and Other Gods." It is a large "T"-shaped structure made up of
illuminated boxes upon which colored plastic snakes appear to be slithering towards the Dantor head. Along its sides are six smaller versions
of spirits heads, all depicting a Voodoo god or goddess. It is an impressive piece, juxtaposing light, shapes and size to create the illusion of a
postmodern Voodoo ceremony.
One of the most provocative series is that of the polyptych "Milocan ou La Migration des Esprits". It is a visual narrative of Haitian history as
seen through the eyes of this artist depicting Colonial times to the present. The first image is titled "Le Depart," where an array of colorfulare
nude,painted only in solid colors; some with plumage on their heads and body; other are dressed in various costumes; tagging along in
various costumes; tagging along in the back is a shackled personified tree. The imagery is erotic, even decadent, as
the wise and powerful melange of religious icons are uprooted from their native lands en route to their next
destination.
In the next part of the story, Duval Carrie offers the viewer "La Traversee." The African characters are now placed in a
cramped boat crossing the Atlantic, reminiscent of the exodus taken by many Haitians refugees. The boat is full of
omnipotent characters who have brought on board the animated tree standing tall in the back of the vessel and
spreading its limbs throughout the background of the painting. The tree is the symbol of life and their ancestral Africa,
and it is now pointing the way to their future homeland.
The following painting is titled "L'Emprise du Funeste Baron." It is the funereal Baron spirit dancing through the
overgrown foliage of a depopulated Haiti. He leaves on the soil the markings of his whirls and spins. The last painting
in the series is "Le Monde Actuel ou Erzulie Interceptee." It is a habitual occurrence for Haitian migrants in their quest
for a better life to be repatriated by the United States Coast Guard. In Duval Carrie's painting, it is no different for the
Voodoo goddess Erzulie. Flanked by an officer on each side, the beautiful exotic brown-skin spirit coquettishly fixes
her long curls. Adorned with rings, headdress, and various heart shapes, she dreamingly walks barefoot down the
steps of the Coast Guard vessel. Strapped to her waist she has a baby representing the next generation of the
diaspora.
Duval Came frames his oils on canvas with elaborate structures. In the Milacan series, the artist has used a blue-green
tone and embellished the area with ceremonial markings and collaged objects. Like the paintings, the frames are rich
in symbolism. In his most recent works, Duval Carrie seems to have abandoned the overt political satire as well as the
painterly surface. Plastic, resin, real and fake plant life, and sublime subject matter appear to be the predilection. The
work is a reappropriation of the style of tables found in tropical restaurants, where shells, sands, and other underwater
objects are frozen in time by the resin process. In "L'Abre Deracine (The Uprooted Tree)," the work is an encased
painting of a tree with collaged birds, leaves, and heart-shaped fruit. The frame is labored over as much as the
painting, and it is all covered with a thick layer of dried resin. Another work along the same line is the installation piece
titled "La Vraie Histoire Amblagos," depicting the story of the Voodoo waters spirits. It is a series of rectangular panels
placed one beside the other. The panels are made up of layers. He first paints the elusive and ephemeral creatures
looking up with imaginary underwater plants and flowers. They are then encased with resin. After the resin dries, the
artist reintroduces the paint and collaged objects to mimic the plant life. The installation is transformed into a large,
luminously translucent pond petrifying the artist's phantasmal spiritual world.
Duval Carrie has taken his place with the new generation of Haitian artists who have been in the universities of
Europe, Canada, and the United States. The level of sophistication in the execution of the subject matter and highly
accomplished manner of handling the material is a proof of the training this artist has received. His chosen genre is
poised between today's multitude of artistic isms and the Haitian vernacular. He has embraced the two worlds, the
European and the Creole.
- Artealdia International -
:: HAITI’S TORTURED SOUL ::
by Matt Schudel
Edouard Duval-Carrie left his native Haiti more than 25 years ago, but Haiti has never left him. Now settled in Miami, Duval-Carrie has
studied and lived all over the world, yet his troubled homeland in the Caribbean continues to be the inspiration for his art.
He doesn't record the everyday events of Haiti in a documentary sense, and his work is nothing like the simple, brightly colored scenes of
peasant life that have become numbingly familiar in recent years. Rather, Duval-Carrie searches his own memory and imagination to create
a private cosmography derived from the Haitian experience.
The many forms of his vision can be seen in "Edouard Duval-Carrie: Endless Passage," through Sept. 7 at the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami. Organized by the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, this mid-career examination of Duval-Carrie's achievements is the most
extensive showing of his art so far in South Florida.
Despite its variety - there are paintings, sculptures, lacquered wooden tiles, modern day altarpiece and reliquaries - no one would ever
mistake Duval-Carrie's art for that of anyone else. There is nothing detached or ironic about it. His aim is to preserve the soul of Haiti, no
matter how tortured it may be. You could call it a fixation or obsession, or you could call it a need to express, the longings, sorrows and hopes
of this poor, blood-stained island nation.
One of the most impressive works in "Endless Passage" is a triptych in the form of a classic altarpiece. The central panel of Trois Feuilles
(Three Leaves) shows a trio of figures from Duval-Carrie's personal pantheon. They rise one above the other, in shades of blue, red and tan,
sprouting leaves in place of hair. Niches cut out of the surface of the altar piece reveal tropical scenes, masks, grimacing faces and images of
hearts. Gold-painted palm trees are carved into the side panels, and pointed " objects (bullets, perhaps?) pierce the surface.
The precise meanings may not always be clear, but there's no mistaking the general drift: Duval-Carrie has merged the pagan beliefs of
Haitian voodoo (or vodou or vaudou, as it's sometimes spelled) with the staid traditions of Western art. As if to say that one system of faith
isn't superior to another, he has made a series of 16 bronze staffs with voodoo symbols that resemble the golden crosiers of the Catholic
church. In a series of eight bronze sculptures, he has given the gods of voodoo as much stature as saints on stained glass windows.
A monumental series of four paintings that depict the indelible curse of slavery, The Migration of the Spirits, invokes imagery that is somewhere between the Bible and The Wizard of Oz. An elegant series of 12 lacquered floor panels from 2002, The True Story of the Water Spirits,
is really a memorial to the souls lost in the Middle Passage.
Like Haiti itself, Duval-Carrie's art is a colorful, ever-evolving blend of European, African and Caribbean influences. He creates his own
symbolic universe, in which boats can be the instrument of either freedom or doom. Again and again, he shows human figures - sometimes
with crosses or animal heads in place of their faces - sailing toward an uncertain destiny. Death, in the form of disguised skeletons, is a
constant companion.
Occasionally Duval-Carrie's lifts the symbolic veil and makes his meaning overt. His Incident in a Garden (1993), in which seven military
figures with piglike faces stand over the decapitated heads of dissidents, is plainly an indictment of the brutal Tontos Macoute militia that
terrorized the nation. Mardi Gras at Fort Dimanche (1992) refers to a notorious prison where Duval-Carrie's brother was held in 1980s as a
subversive. In this scathingly satirical painting, Haiti's onetime dictator, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, is dressed as a gun-toting bride,
surrounded by accomplices - fashionably dressed women, a priest, a military officer, and a mysterious figure in a suit -all wearing dark glasses.
Duval-Carrie is a powerful artist with an original vision, yet he may not be for everyone. If it's elegance, , restraint, and sure-handed ' skill
with a paintbrush that you may want, then you're looking in the wrong place. He's an artist who plays endless variations on the same themes
- though it should be noted some of his recent works, incorporating flowers, leaves and fruits with painting, seem to have little to do with
Haitian politics or history.
An artist should be appreciated for what he is, rather than for what he is not. And what you need to remember about Edouard Duval-Carrie
is_that, no matter how long he has been away from his homeland, he carries the wounded soul of Haiti within his heart, and within his art.
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
:: Duval Carrie: La Casa en Llamas ::
EDOURARD DUVAL-CARRIE: OF SHRINES AND SAINTS (English)
"...THE MAGICAL BEGINS TO HAPPEN UN M ISTAKABLY WHEN IT EMERGES FROM AN UNEXPECTED ALTERATION OF REALITY (THE MIRACLE),
FROM A PRIVILEGED REVELATION OF REALITY, FROM AN UNUSUAL ILLUMINATION OR EXCEPTIONALLY BECOMING OF THE UNNOTICED
RICHNESS OF REALITY, FROM A WIDENING OF THE SCALES AND CATEGORIES OF REALITY, PERCEIVED WITH PARTICULAR INTENSITY IN VIRTUE
OF AN EXALTATION OF THE SPIRIT THAT LEADS IT TO A MODE OF "LIMITED STATE". IN ORDER TO BEGIN, THE SENSATION OF THE MAGICAL
PRESUPPOSES FAITH." (1)
THE CONCEPT OF "MAGICAL REALISM" ENUNCIATED IN LITERATURE BY ALEJO CARPENT1ER, IS ONE OF THE BEST MANIFESTATIONS OF THE
RICHNESS OF CARIBBEAN CULTURE. HAITI IS, WITHOUT A DOUBT, A SPACE THAT DUE TO ITS NATURE AND HISTORY GENERATES A RICH
REALITY, A COUNTRY THAT WHEN FACED WITH SUFFERING REASSURES ITS FAITH IN THE GODS WHO ANSWER TO THE URGENCY OF
BELIEVERS. WITHIN THIS CONTEXT, THE MAGICAL ELEMENT PARTS FROM THE EXISTENCE OF REALITY, IN ORDER TO PROVIDE A PLATFORM
FOR THE ARTISTIC MANIFESTATIONS TO TAKE PLACE, AND IF IT IS TRUE THAT LITERATURE IS THE PRECURSOR OF THIS CONCEPT, THEN IT IS THE
OPTIC OF FINE ARTS THAT MATERIALIZES THE RICHNESS OF THIS WORLD, WHERE THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT,
DIFFUSES BOTH CONCEPTS.
THE MAN AND ARTIST IN EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIE DO NOT ALLOW HIM TO
ESCAPE HIS SHUDDERING REALITY, WHICH IS THE MAIN LEIT MOTIV OF HIS
ARTWORKS. EVEN THOUGH HE STUDIED AND LIVED OUTSIDE HAITI, HIS
COUNTRY AND CULTURE ARE THE PRINCIPAL REFERENCES FOR HIS WORK, IN
WHICH HE CONSTANTLY UTTERS HIS COMMITMENT TO HISTORY, AND HIS
NEED TO BE A REPORTER OF HIS TIME. HIS WORKS REFLECT THE SENSIBILITY
AND ESSENCE OF RELIGIOUS CULT, OF NATURE AND HUMAN KIND. THERE IS
AN EXPLICIT YEARNING OF EXPERIENCING THE PRINCIPAL MOMENTS AND
EVENTS THAT UNSETTLE HAITI, LIKE IN THE WORK LA MAISON D'HAITI,
REGARDING THE RECENT EVENTS TAKING PLACE WITH THE FALL OF JEAN-B
ERTRAND ARISTIDE'S GOVERNMENT.
THE COMPOSITION REVOLVES AROUND A HOUSE IN FLAMES THAT HAS A PAIR
OF MILITARY TANKS ON EACH SIDE, ALLUDING TO THE PRESENCE OF THE
UNITED STATES DURING THE EVENTS. ERZULIE, GODDESS OF WATER AND
BENEFACTOR OF HAITI, APPEARS TO THE INFERIOR BORDER OF THE PAINTING.
WITHOUT FURTHER HESITATION AND USING SIMPLE ELEMENTS, THE WORK
WITNESSES HOW THE ARTIST LIVES AND INTERPRETS THE MOMENT. USING
DUVAL-CARRI E'S CHARACTERISTIC LANGUAGE, THE PIECE IS CREATED
-SOMEHOW REMINISCENT OF THE COMPOSITION AND ORDER OF ALTARS-,
INCORPORATING THE FRAME AS PART OF THE WORK. THE ORNAMENTATION IS
FUNDAMENTAL IN REAFFIRMING THE SIGNIFICANCE AND CONCEPTION OF
THE WORK. WITH THIS IN MIND THE AUTHOR TAKES CARE NOT TO NEGLECT
ANY COMPONENT AND TO CONCEIVE EACH PIECE IN FUNCTION OF THE
CONCEPTUAL AND FORMAL RICHNESS THAT MAKE UP HIS ARTISTIC
DISCOURSE.
IT IS NECESSARY TO ALLUDE TO HIS SCULPTURES, ESSENTIAL WITHIN HIS AESTHETIC UNIVERSE, WHICH INCLUDE THE ICONOGRAPHY THAT
ALLOWS US TO RECOGNIZE ITS AUTHOR EASILY. INSPIRED MOSTLY BY THE SAINTS THAT MAKE UP THE VOODOO PANTHEON, THESE
SCULPTURES PERSONIFY THEM AND THE CHARACTERISTICS THEY REPRESENT. THE COLORS AND FORMS RESPOND TO THE
TRANSFORMATIONS OF EACH DEITY, IN WHICH WE FIND THE STRENGTH OF OGUN, THE POWER OF LEGBA OR THE LOVE AND BEAUTY OF
ERZULIE FREDA. THE ALL POSSESS THE POETIC AND AESTHETIC CHARGE OF CHARACTERS SURFACING FROM NATURE.
HIS LANGUAGE, HEIR OF THE PROFUSION OF HAITIAN LANDSCAPES, THE COLORS AND COSMO VISION OF THE VOODOO PANTHEON, ARE
WHAT MAKE UP DUVAL-CARRIE'S AESTHETIC UNIVERSE. HE HAS CREATED VERY PARTICULAR PICTORIAL REPRESENTATIONS THAT
CORRESPOND PERFECTLY WITH HIS POETICS. IN EACH WORK, THE ARTIST WORKS PARTING FROM HIS SORROUNDINGS, WHICH EXPLAINS
WHY HIS WORKS HAVE LEAVES, FLOWERS, AND EARTHLY-COLORS ——SO THAT THEY MAY TRANSMIT A STATE OF MIND, AN IMPRESSION OR
A MEMORY.
WITHOUT A DOUBT, THE ARTWORK OF EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIE, CARRIES THE BEST OF AFRO-CARIBBEAN CULTURE, OF THE RICHNESS AND
DIVERSITY OF ITS WISDOM, AS WELL AS OF FAITH AND THE SENSUALITY OF A COUNTRY THAT LIVES AND OFFERS ONE OF THE MOST PROFUSE
AND COMPLEX LEGACIES TO THE HISTORY OF ART.
MARISOL MARTELL 1- PROLOGUE OF THE KINGDOM OF THIS WORLD, PAGE 4
EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIÉ: DE ALTARES Y AVATARES (Spanish)
"...LO MARAVILLOSO COMIENZA A SERLO DE MANERA INEQUÍVOCA CUANDO SURGE DE UNA INESPERADA ALTERACIÓN DE LA REALIDAD (EL
MILAGRO), DE UNA REVELACIÓN PRIVILEGIADA DE LA REALIDAD, DE UNA ILUMINACIÓN INHABITUAL O SINGULARMENTE FAVORECEDORA
DE LAS INADVERTIDAS RIQUEZAS DE LA REALIDAD, DE UNA AMPLIACIÓN DE LAS ESCALAS Y CATEGORÍAS DE LA REALIDAD, PERCIBIDAS CON
PARTICULAR INTENSIDAD EN VIRTUD DE UNA EXALTACIÓN DEL ESPÍRITU QUE LO CONDUCE A UN MODO DE 'ESTADO LÍMITE'. PARA EMPEZAR,
LA SENSACIÓN DE LO MARAVILLOSO PRESUPONE UNA FE".(1)
DESDE LA LITERATURA, EL CONCEPTO DE LO "REAL MARAVILLOSO" ENUNCIADO POR ALEJO CARPENTIER, ES UNO DE LOS QUE MEJOR
MANIFIESTA LA RIQUEZA CULTURAL DEL CARIBE. HAITÍ, ES SIN LUGAR A DUDAS UN ESPACIO QUE, POR SU NATURALEZA E HISTORIA, GENERA
UNA RICA REALIDAD, UN PUEBLO QUE ANTE EL SUFRIMIENTO REAFIRMA SU FE EN DIOSES QUE RESPONDEN A LA CONTINGENCIA DE SUS
CREYENTES. EN ESTE CONTEXTO LO MARAVILLOSO PARTE DE LA EXISTENCIA REAL, ES EL CALDO DE CULTIVO PARA LAS MANIFESTACIONES
ARTÍSTICAS. Si BIEN LA LITERATURA ES LA PRECURSORA DE ESTE CONCEPTO, LAS ARTES PLÁSTICAS MATERIALIZAN DESDE SU ÓPTICA LA
RIQUEZA DE ESTE MUNDO, DONDE LA FRONTERA ENTRO LO REAL Y LO IRREAL, DIFUMINA AMBOS CONCEPTOS.
EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIÉ, COMO HOMBRE Y ARTISTA, NO PUEDE ESCAPAR A SU ESTREM ECEDORA REALIDAD, PRINCIPAL LEÍ MOTIV DE SUS
OBRAS. A PESAR DE HABER ESTUDIADO Y DE VIVIR FUERA DE HAITÍ, SU PAÍS Y SU CULTURA SON LOS REFERENTES PRINCIPALES DE SU OBRA,
EN LA QUE CONSTANTEMENTE ENUNCIA UN COMPROMISO CON LA HISTORIA, Y SU NECESIDAD DE SER UN CRONISTA DE SU ÉPOCA. EN SUS
PIEZAS SE REFLEJA LA SENSIBILIDAD Y LA ESENCIA DE LOS CULTOS RELIGIOSOS, LA NATURALEZA Y EL HOMBRE. HAY UN DESEO EXPLÍCITO
DE VIVENCIAR LOS PRINCIPALES MOMENTOS Y ACONTECIMIENTOS QUE SACUDEN A HAITÍ COMO SUCEDE EN LA OBRA LA MAISON D'HAITI,
QUE RECOGE LOS RECIENTES SUCESOS DE LA CAÍDA DEL GOBIERNO DE JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE.
LA COMPOSICIÓN GIRA ALREDEDOR DE UNA CASA EN LLAMAS Y A SUS DOS LADOS APARECEN SENDOS TANQUES EN REFERENCIA A LA
PRESENCIA NORTEAMERICANA DURANTE LOS HECHOS. ERZULIE —— DIOSA DE LAS AGUAS Y PATRONA DE HAITÍ——, APARECE
REPRESENTADA EN EL BORDE INFERIOR DEL CUADRO. SIN MAYORES REGODEOS Y CON ELEMENTOS SIMPLES, LA OBRA ES TESTIGO DE CÓMO
EL ARTISTA VIVE E INTERPRETA EL MOMENTO. LA PIEZA ESTÁ CONSTRUIDA CON EL LENGUAJE CARACTERÍSTICO DE DUVAL-CARRIÉ ——QUE
RECUERDA EN ALGUNA MEDIDA LA COMPOSICIÓN Y EL ORDEN DE LOS ALTARES—— INTEGRANDO EL MARCO COMO PARTE DE LA MISMA.
LA ORNAMENTACIÓN ES FUNDAMENTAL PARA REAFIRMAR EL SIGNIFICADO Y LA CONCEPCIÓN DE LA OBRA. POR ELLO, EL AUTOR NO
DESCUIDA NINGÚN COMPONENTE Y CONCIBE CADA PEDAZO EN FUNCIÓN DE LA RIQUEZA CONCEPTUAL Y FORMAL QUE PUEDA APORTAR
A SU DISCURSO ARTÍSTICO.
RESULTA NECESARIO ALUDIR A LA OBRA ESCULTÓRICA DEL ARTISTA, ESENCIAL DENTRO DE SU UNIVERSO PLÁSTICO, Y POR CUYA
ICONOGRAFÍA ES FÁCIL RECONOCER AL AUTOR. INSPIRADAS EN SU MAYORÍA EN LOS SANTOS QUE COMPONEN EL PANTEÓN VODÚ, ESTAS
ESCULTURAS PERSONIFICAN LAS CARACTERÍSTICAS QUE CADA UNO DE ELLOS REPRESENTA. SUS COLORES Y FORMAS RESPONDEN A LOS
AVATARES DE CADA DEIDAD, EN ELLAS SE RECONOCE LA FUERZA DE OGÚN, EL PODER DE L.EGBA O EL AMOR Y LA BELLEZA DE ERZULIE
FREDA. TODAS POSEEN LA CARGA POÉTICA Y PLÁSTICA DE LOS CARACTERES QUE SURGEN DE LA NATURALEZA.
SU LENGUAJE, HEREDERO DE LA PROFUSIÓN DE PAISAJES HAITIANOS, ASÍ COMO LOS COLORES Y LA COSMOVISIÓN DEL PANTEÓN VODÚ,
CONFORMAN EL UNIVERSO PLÁSTICO DE DUVAL-CARRIÉ, QUIEN HA CREADO REPRESENTACIONES PICTÓRICAS MUY PARTICULARES QUE
CORRESPONDEN PERFECTAMENTE CON SU POÉTICA. EN CADA OBRA EL ARTISTA TRABAJA A PARTIR DEL ENTORNO NATURAL. DE AHÍ QUE
SUS PIEZAS INTEGREN HOJAS, FLORES Y COLORES EN FUNCIÓN DE TRANSMITIR UN ESTADO DE ÁNIMO, UNA IMPRESIÓN O UN RECUERDO.
SIN DUDA, LA OBRA DE EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIÉ, ES PORTADORA DE LO MEJOR DE LA CULTURA AFROCARIBEÑA, DE LA RIQUEZA Y
VARIEDAD DE SU SABIDURÍA, DE LA FE Y LA SENSUALIDAD DE UN PUEBLO QUE VIVE Y OFRECE A LA HISTORIA DEL ARTE, UNO DE LOS
LEGADOS ARTÍSTICOS MÁS PROFUSOS Y COMPLEJOS.
MARISOL MARTELL 1- PRÓLOGO DE EL REINO DE ESTE MUNDO, PÁGINA 4.
From the issue dated October 15, 2004
A Surreal Excursion
Artwork by Edouard Duval-Carrié
January 1, 2004, marked the 200th anniversary of the proclamation of Haitian independence by General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first leader of
the "Black Republic," as Haiti is often called. To celebrate that great occasion, the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically
elected president, asked painter and sculptor Edouard Duval-Carrié to curate an exhibition of his work in the heart of Port-au-Prince, the nation's
capital.
Duval-Carrié now makes his art in a studio in the "Little Haiti" district of Miami, but like many of
his countrymen, he is a man of the world. Studio trained in Paris, he has lived in Puerto Rico and
Canada and even traveled to the Republic of Benin in West Africa, ancestral home of the
divinities of Vodou (the national religion of Haiti). His work in various media celebrates these
divinities and their role in the history of his country, especially the events of 1804. ...
With Duval-Carrié's carnival sensibility comes a quirky humor that enlivens even his darkest
work. Seeing daily life through the scrim of carnival transforms his painted Haiti into a pays
surréal, as he explained to Vodou scholar Karen McCarthy Brown: "Reality in Haiti can be so
disastrous that you have to take a little excursion into some surreal or fantasy world. One has to
create, hoping things will get better." Of course such "little excursions" are really made through
the looking glass (a favorite Vodou metaphor), as he further explained to art critic Judy Cantor:
"The fantastic dimension in my painting is the fruit of observing everyday life in Haiti. ... The
conditions are so tragic that they have to be balanced with the supernatural." ...
Duval-Carrié is a fusion artist. A child of the bourgeoisie, he has intuited (or imbibed) the
aesthetic of a Vodou that is not so far from Max Ernst's description of collage as "the coupling of
two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane which does not suit them" or, better
yet, a Haitian aesthetic equal to Lautréamont's definition of beauty: "the chance encounter on
a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella." Lots of sewing machines meet
umbrellas on Vodou altars and in Duval-Carrié's paintings.
"La Migration des Bêtes, Hommage à Edward Hicks (Migration of the
Beasts, Homage to Edward Hicks)," 1999 (mixed media on canvas),
Lanster Family Collection, Miami (Photograph by Marc Koven)
The artwork is from the exhibition "Divine Revolution: The Art of Edouard Duval-Carrié," at the University of California at Los Angeles's Fowler Museum of
Cultural History through January 30, 2005. The text, from the exhibition catalog, is by the exhibition's guest curator, Donald J. Cosentino, a scholar of Haitian
art and a professor in UCLA's department of world arts and cultures.
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 51, Issue 8, Page B19
© 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
:: GLOBAL CROSSING ::
Unfolding this month at the Lowe Art Museum is a tale of two painters enthralled by African art.
For one, Adolph Gottlieb, such a fascination impelled him to create his own language of stripped-down forms. Then he boxed these sleek little circles
and spirals into that stylish grid beloved by Modernists everywhere, as well as by graphic designers in thrall to Martha Stewart.
For the other, Edouard Duval-Carrie, the arts of Africa are part of a messy Caribbean mélange that becomes ever more complicated and dangerous.
The Beginning of Seeing: Adolph Gottlieb and Tribal Art at the Lowe, incorporates paintings from the '40s and early '50s and catches the artist on his
way up, before he has reached the signature forms of his career.
Gottlieb (1903-1974) was a seminal American Abstract Expressionist who began collecting tribal art objects in the '30s. The so-called "burst"
paintings of his final years, produced mainly in the '60s, condense the disembodied eyes he appropriated from African masks and other
non-Western art into a single, fiery explosion of color with the apocalyptic overtones of a nuclear holocaust.
Edouard Duval-Carrie: Endless Passage, also at the Lowe, is a midcareer retrospective of sculpture and painting by Duval-Carrie, a Miami-based artist
born in Haiti. Deeply entwined throughout his art are the myths and arresting Creole aesthetic of Haitian Vodou.
This New World religion has been stained by the bloodied history of the Middle Passage slave trade, but it has also been fed by a stream or
astonishingly varied cultural icons, from the luridly lifelike painted statues of saints at Roman Catholic altars to Masonic insignia to West African
temple paintings.
MIGRATION
Unlike Gottlieb, however, Duval-Carrie has a first-hand link to the transformations African art has undergone in its passage to the New World. He is
especially taken with the ritual story-telling power these objects possess.
For him, the most pressing master narrative is migration, an apparently endless passing from one place to another, a journey that can chart
departure points and destinations in Africa, Haiti and the United States. In his solo show at the Miami Art Museum three years ago, he presented a
tour- de-force installation, called Migrations, that was part Vodou temple and part Catholic chapel.
Though it reveled in the gorgeous sparkling surfaces of sequined Haitian Vodou Hags, this work — with its painting of one Vodou spirit morphed
into an exotic SoBe dancer — was also fraught with tragedy. It showed that even spirits were leaving an island mired in fatal desperation, fleeing the
legacy of leaders he has described as running the gamut from "operetta emperor to demented shaman."
Mardi Gras au Fort Dimanche is an especially caustic stab at the Duvalier dictatorship. Duval-Carrie's gripping four-part series of paintings now at the
Lowe, and on loan from the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, also describes that passage of migration with an accuracy both fanciful and
frightening.
In the brilliant sun drenched colors and relatively flat perspective of tourist-friendly Caribbean landscape paintings, this series, Miloucan on La
Migration des Esprits, is arranged to occupy one vast wall in the museum. They aspire to the grandeur of Old Master paintings in a cathedral, and
their scenes of capture, escape and paradise despoiled resonate with Biblical urgency.
During the '50s, Duval-Carrie grew up in an upper-class family typically disdainful of Vodou, but one that also looked the other way when maids
appropriated leftover bottles of Anais Anais perfume for pink cake-and-candle stocked altars to the Vodou deity Erzulie.
"Everybody's aware of it," says Duval-Carrie in an interview in his Design District studio. "Even the priests that come from Europe. That's the first thing
they find out, that there's this whole world of the spirits."
As the brutalities of the Duvalier regime increased, Duval-Carrie's family fled to Puerto Rico, where he spent his teenage years, though his father kept
the family business going in Port-au-Prince, and as an artist Duval-Carrie has returned to the island frequently.
His sumptuously layered and colored paintings are a grand mix of history, religion and decorative arts. They offer a startling blend of transplanted
West African religious lore and 18th-century French rococo, all marbled with tropical colors and grafted onto modern-day stories of corruption and
displacement among vistas shaded by the Haitian royal palm.
AFRICAN TIES
Erzulie, a coquettish figure the artist has painted and sculpted frequently, may be a not-so-distant cousin to a Fon deity from modern-day Nigeria, a
figure that's a quixotic combination of motherhood and sorcery. Scholars have looked at other threads connecting Haitian Vodou figures like
Danbala — a serpentine spirit lushly redolent of water, wisdom and rainbows — with West African deities and they've discovered many family ties.
It's also possible that lwa, the Creole word for Vodou spirits, carries linguistic links to the Fon world of "lo" for "mystery," and to the West African Yoruba
word "lawo,” meaning "secret."
Erzulie is "a totally Haitian spirit," says Duval-Came, "but you can see how French she is. She's the goddess or love, the mulatto woman born out of
the illicit relationship between the master and slave."
However you parse the West African bloodlines of Haitian Vodou and their passage into Duval-Carrie's painting and sculpture, it's Vodou's syncretic
layering of colors and design and sacred and secular sources that are making the most emphatic stamp on Duval-Carrie's art.
QUIET BEAUTY
The Beginning of Seeing:Tribal Art and the Pictographs of Adolph Gottlieb is a smaller, quieter show, in which narrative is gently suppressed in the
favor of cool formal patterns, that the artist often likened to inscriptions or missives that would speak to the spirit rather than the mind.
Many of the streamlined shapes he adapts from tribal art are encased in a slightly uneven grid, to create what he called "pictographs." He found
precedents for this grid from such divergent examples as paintings by Piet Mondrian and the cellular-like ribbon of forms woven in blankets by tribes
of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
Giving this show its added eloquence are examples from the Lowe's permanent collection, especially Gottlieb's New York Night Scene, a wonderfully
concise painting that splices pillars of skyscraper strips of color with the earthy, slightly ragged geometries of tribal art.
Posted on Sun, Jul. 20, 2003
Elisa Turner is The Herald's art critic.
[email protected]
:: Lespri Endepandan: Discovering Haitian Sculpture ::
Lespri Endepandan: Discovering Haitian Sculpture will be a groundbreaking exhibition of great scholarly and curatorial importance, bringing
together a diverse selection of over 50 pieces from Haitian sculptors spanning the past half century to the present. The exhibit will open at the
Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum on Friday, September 10, 2004 and will continue through December 5, 2004.
This unprecedented exhibit marks the first time Haitian sculpture is the sole subject of a major museum exhibition. The complexity and richness of
Haitian sculpture is well deserving of its own study. Haitian sculpture diverges from the easy narratives, rich colors, and sweet depictions of everyday
life traditionally found in Haitian painting. A profound expression of Haitian life, this new tradition of Haitian art has few colors but great intensity.
The curatorial focus of the exhibit will emphasize the intrinsic importance of the materials used in Haitian sculpture and their social, religious,
economic and political significance. The works in Lespri Endepandan are made from a variety of materials including iron, aluminum, glass,
paper-mache, found objects, terracotta, wood and cement. The artists' distinctive techniques and methodologies work outside the confines of the
Western aesthetic and these non-traditional practices have established a new paradigm within Haitian art. Lespri Endepandan represents the
independent spirit, not only in terms of Haiti's history of political independence, but also the Haitian sculptor's disregard to traditional western
paradigms from which is borne the artistic independence.
Three categories will loosely guide the structure of the exhibition: Iron Traditions, which will feature the work of the Iron Masters who laid a
foundation for the sculptural tradition in Haiti. Ritual Objects with a focus on their three dimensional characteristics, and finally, Contemporary
Interpretations, cutting edge work from Haiti's younger generation of sculptors.
The tradition of metal works, beginning with Georges Liautaud, was born in the 1950's in the Haitian village of Croix-des Bouquets. The innovative
creations of the Iron Masters initiated this art form of hammering and chiseling intriguing forms out of iron oil drums found in Haiti. These sculptures
are a moving testament to the creativity of the Haitian people, inspired by their unique history of cultural and religious independence. A diverse
selection of the Iron Master's work from this period will be featured in the exhibition.
Haitian sculptors working in metal interpret vodou themes to convey the transformative elements of the natural world. The influence of vodou is so
embedded in all threads of Haitian life, that it can be seen as a cultural phenomenon beyond-a spiritual belief. The ritual objects in the exhibit are
laden with strong symbolism based on vodou traditions. Haitian expert, Karen McCarthy Brown states, "Living is understood to be a process of
continuous transformation. Everything is about to turn into something else... the young into the old, the man into the woman, the woman into the
man, the human into the animal."
The younger generation of Haitian artists is increasingly innovative in their use of materials. The work of the contemporary artists in the exhibition
reveals fresh perspectives on Haitian culture. Their creative methods are unique primarily because of the bold juxtapositions of materials used which
can be called post-modernist in their re-interpretation of existing art-making processes.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive bilingual (Kreyol and English) catalogue including an essay by leading expert and scholar,
Donald Cosentino, Ph.D., and will undoubtedly become an invaluable contribution to the growing body of scholarly literature of Haitian art.
Virtual Vodou. Haitian [Post]Modern Sculpture
Donald Cosentino
"[T]hat art of reassembling fragments of pre-existing images in such a way as to form a new image is the most important innovation in the art of
the century. Found objects, chance creations, ready-mades (mass-produced items promoted into art objects) abolish the separation between art
and life. The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen, if recognized" (Simic 1992:18).
No matter how [postmodern contemporary Haitian sculpture might appear, it is crucial to appreciate its debt to the ancient African Atlantic
aesthetic of appropriation, and assemblage. In many of the best pieces of contemporary art, the streams of the Haitian Renaissance and the Wanga
tradition seem to flow together, engulfing new media, and demonstrating once again the infinite adaptability of Haitian culture and especially
Vodou, to re-figuration.
Indeed most of Haitian art can be described as postmodern, so long as it is understood that the canons of postmodernity were first established in
colonial St. Domingue with the slave trade. The French colony was in fact a free-floating signifier, a place where, as Charles Simic described, "the old
world shipwrecked" (92: 21). The culture built from that wreckage never experienced the processes of modernism. Ripped from any linear European,
Amerindian or African history, the Haitian Weltanschauung was necessarily synchronic. The prefabricated products of the industrialized world
dumped into Haitian markets were welcomed as signs of another order of existence. This tumble of iron barrels and plastic dolls was regarded as
flotsam and jetsam from the world under the sea, where divinities and ancestors dwelled. With an X-ray precision, Haitian sculptors continue to
discern their "Real Presence" lurking in the most improbable and various detritus; and with singular imagination and craft, they shape their art to
reveal that Divine Presence to the rest of the brave new (postmodern) world.
What separates contemporary Haitian art from its antecedents is self-consciousness. The trajectory from the unknown sculptors of paket kongo to
the eye-popping assemblages of Celeur, Nasson, Boucard, Vilaire, St. Eloi or Duval-Carrie is marked by the artists' ever greater awareness of global
contexts. Making gods from the market has become making gods for the market. Contemporary artists are establishing what now might be called
Haiti's "Waning of the Middle Ages," that secular moment when the art of belief becomes the art about belief.
I doubt many Haitian artists would recognize the muse described by Andre Pierre, "Before I paint, I take this canvas and I put it on an easel. I wait for
an inspiration, before describing it on canvas. Then an inspiration comes. I sing a song, and then I describe what I sang. I describe the song on the
canvas" (Cosentino 95: xxiii). The intuitive is buttressed by a knowing cosmopolitanism, as sophisticated artists force-march their Iwa into the global
art mart.
Edouard Duval-Carrie. In thus querying these sculptures, we appreciate that postmodern artists can engage traditional Vodou imagery to address
contemporary realities in ways not open to the material metaphysics of a Liautaud or a Barra. The work of Edouard Duval-Carrie is exemplary
(illustration 31). Every material is grist for his postmodern Vodou sensibility. The Iwa now board "Bossou's Red Boat" equipped with palos (sticks)
from Kongo reaching out like radio antennae. Where will Bossou sail his boat? North, along the Gulf Stream to Miami, Brooklyn or Montreal where
new Little Haitis re-establish their gods? The Iwa are ersatz anemones from Ginee: the Island Beneath the Sea. In Duval-Carrie's sculptures everything
is lit-up, vaselined and ready for action. Heavy red resin divinities who inspired Lespri Endependan now seem poised for postmodern revivals.
Los Angeles, 2004.
:: VOODOO CHILD The Art of Edouard Duval-Carrié ::
THE ISLAND OF HAITI has a blood-soaked history filled with oppression, rebellion, and corruption. Once France's wealthiest producing colony, its
imported African slave population, totaling 500,000, was stirred to revolt in August 1791 by a ritual animal sacrifice performed by Boukman, a Vodou
houngan, or high priest. Blood oaths championing freedom were made, and 13 brutal years of fighting French, English, and Spanish colonizers
followed. It was an era of international upheaval, and documents like The Rights of Man and The Declaration of Independence were being drafted
and implemented.
The ultimate leader of this particular rebellion, former slave Toussaint L'Ouverture, was so successful at galvanizing his rebel forces that he captured
what is now the Dominican Republic and proclaimed himself "Governor General" of the entire island in 1801. His reign was short lived; he died in a
French prison in 1803. A scant year later, in January 1804, his loyal general, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, declared independence, eradicated slavery by
freeing every citizen, and created the first "Black Republic."
Vodou mysticism, historical events, and political angst permeate Edouard Duval-Carrie's first solo museum exhibition on the West Coast, at the UCLA
Fowler Museum. Born in Port-au-Prince in 1954 and trained at the Ecole Nationa!e Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and Loyola University,
Montreal, Duval-Carrie now makes his art in a studio in the "Little Haiti" district of Miami. When he was a boy, his family was forced to flee the island
of Haiti for political reasons. He lived in Puerto Rico for a time, and his pilgrimages included a trek to the Republic of Benin in West Africa, the ancestral
home of the divinities of Vodou, a religion and way of life in Haiti that he incorporates into his work, as well as his practice.
Looking at Duval-Carrie's work, you can trace the mythologies of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), the Duvalier Regime (c. 1957-1990), and the
region's Vodou religion. Divine Hevolution is a series of sequined and beaded "drapos" (flags) based on the artist's paintings of revolutionary themes.
The flags are spiritual emblems honoring Vodou divinities, but Duval-Carrie also makes them political symbols. He depicts the martyred hero,
General Toussaint L'Ouverture, in an elaborate, tri-colored French uniform, clutching Haiti's first constitution in his left hand, while his left foot
crushes the head of a serpent, symbolizing both the demise of the French, or Duvalier, regimes and the patriarchal serpent divinity, Danbala. Other
bejeweled drapos reference the economics of slave labor serving the privileged white European colonials.
The flags are actual reproductions from a commission Duval-Carrie received from the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide (Haiti's first
democratically elected president) for the 200th anniversary of Haitian independence in January 2004. The originals were destroyed (as explained in
the exhibition's catalog) when Aristide's celebration was met with violence that resulted in his removal from the country: "The burning of cultural
heritage, including government-commissioned works by Duval-Carrie, was indicative of the anger and unrest brewing beneath this island-nation's
political veneer. Yet it was also proof of the power of art. The making and the unmaking of art are, and have always been, among the most effective
means of voicing political opposition. Like the desecration of Byzantine icons, the burning of Duval-Carrie's works reflects their efficacy." Fortunately,
the designs were not lost, and the flags were duplicated for the exhibition.
The show also includes an exquisite group of paintings owned by the Bass Museum of Art and explores the mythological trajectories of the divinities
tied to historical political events. The Migration Trilogy paintings show the migration of the Vodou spirits—walking chained together through forests
and floating across vast oceans. The Crossing depicts a boat full of gods, including Baron Semedi, who is the keeper of the cemetery, Gran Bwa as
the tree pointing down toward the African children lost at sea, and the water spirit Simbi seated in front with a question mark over his ear, indicating
an uncertain itinerary. This trilogy mirrors the forced migration of slaves from Africa and the often futile and treacherous attempts of Haitians fleeing
the violence and oppression of their own country.
The artist's own words express his appreciation for both man and spirit: "[Spirits] are the true representation of the people, and for me they are the
soul of Haiti. The whole pantheon is created in the image of man.... First of all, they are there to provide for the people and to help the people and to
be part of them. They look like them, too. Of course, I put my imagination into it, because there is a lot of fantastic activity. But basically, I'm talking
about the Haitian people when I paint the spirits, and their capacity for being more than they really are."
In a time when we need to be more than we really are, Duval-Carrie's bizarre images reference a tragic but familiar history of man combating
prejudice, greed, and unchecked power. Using the richly symbolic visual language of Haiti, the artist fuses the spiritual and carnal experiences of a
country trying to liberate itself from powers that cater not to the many, but to the few.
Divine Revolution: The Art of Edouard Duval-Carrie /s an exhibition and catalog organized by the UCLA Fowler Museum. For more information about
this artist, visit www.fowler.ucla.edu.
juxtapoz #55 Mar/Apr 2005 pgs. 64-96
:: A VALIANT HEART ::
by EDWIDGE DANTICAT
EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIE TURNS LIFE INTO ART, DRAWING INSPIRATION FROM HIS LITTLE HAITI ATELIER AND THE JOURNEY THAT LED HIM THERE.
A crimson heart merges with two crosses— one large, one small—on the front door that leads into Edouard Duval-Carrie's Little Haiti
studio. He spends his days in a former warehouse in the heart of Miami's Haitian community, not only creating, but also meeting with art
lovers and collectors like Mireille Chancy-Gonzalez, the Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance co-founder, who shares the space, and with the city
officials who are planning to build the Little Haiti Cultural Park around it. The fight to keep his workspace in the midst of the Cultural Park has
been a long and arduous one, and has included letters and visits to City Hall and meetings with city planners and architects. But at last he
thinks he might be able to stay in the area he loves.
For the gregarious Duval-Carrie, an internationally recognized artist, has never really been a solitary figure. His work itself seems a collaborative effort, his crowded canvases and crammed collages brimming with mortals and spirits alike. In his much-admired Migration of the Gods
series, for example, Duval-Carrie chronicles the journey of several African deities from their ancestral birthplace to Haiti and eventually to
Miami, where he has lived and worked for more than a decade.
Born in Port-au-Prince in 1954, Duval-Carrie has had a journey that at times paralleled his divine travelers, from one country and one stylistic
exploration to the next. Before setting out for Canada, he frequented Port-au-Prince's Centre d'Art, where some of Haiti's most famous artists
began their careers, then continued his studies at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. His work today encompasses his
various influences and experiences as well as the present moment in Haitian history.
"I'm like a sponge," he says, during a casual chat on a Friday afternoon in his studio. "Everything inspires me." In the spacious, high-ceilinged
room where he works is a mix of finished and unfinished canvases and a series of large heads in several stages of creation. The most finished
of them stands on a platform, part African mask and part court jester, further manifestation of Duval-Carrie's own brand of syncretism.
Lately, Duval-Carrie has been interested in scale—giant outdoor pieces that "carry things further, that are bigger than myself."
"I am very much at ease with the public sphere," he adds, with his characteristic broad smile. "I love creating things that everybody can own
and share and enjoy." Among his public pieces is a Little Haiti mural of Toussaint L'Ouverture that he created, along with some students, at the
entrance of the ele-mentary school named after that revolutionary leader. Another major outdoor public art project, which Duval-Carrie
created in January at the new bicentennial museum in Haiti, was destroyed by a paramilitary group in the wake of President Aristide's ouster
in February.
As the 200-year anniversary of Haitian independence winds down during Art Basel, fans of Haitian art will get a chance to see his work at
the Bass Museum as well as at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at FIU, where he is part of a groundbreaking show called "Lespri Endepandan (Independent Spirit): Discovering Haitian Sculpture." At the Convention Center, he will be represented by the Bernice Steinbaum
Gallery booth, J 17.
As for the cross-enshrined crimson heart that adorns Duval-Carrie's studio's front door, it was suggested to him for another house deep in
the Haitian countryside by a builder who acknowledged what he called Duval-Carrie's ke vanyan or valiant heart: "Whether in art or building
a house, whatever you're doing, you never give up," the man told him. "You have a valiant heart."
EDWIDGE DANTICAT was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was 12. She is the author of several books, including
Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist, and The Farming of Bones, an American Book
Award winner, and most recently the acclaimed novel, The Dew Breaker. She has written a young adult novel, Behind the Mountains, as well
as a travel narrative, After the Dance, A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel. Her next book for young adults, Anacaona, Golden Flower, will be
published in spring, 2005.
OCEAN DRIVE MAGAZINE - ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH ISSUE
MIAMI BEACH 2004
:: “WORLDPAINTING”, Vaudou-art, and/or Neo-baroque – Art of Edouard Duval-Carrié ::
Paris, France 1989: Three painters (One French, one Senegalese and one Haitian) all three from nations which in olden times participated in
the infamous triangular slave trade. All -working for an exhibition celebrating the French Revolution Bicentennial held at the Musee des Arts
Africains et Oceaniens. Edouard Duval-Carrie, the Haitian contributes a quite uncatholic altarpiece commemorating the victims of the slave
trade.
Monterey, Mexico 1992: For the five hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean, the Marco Foundation organizes a
retrospective of Duval-Carrie's work where he presents a new altarpiece entitled "Breve Relacion de la Destruccion de las Indias" after Bartolome de las Casas and a triptych representing the "Sacred Forest" surrounded by sculptures.
Ouidah, Benin 1993: At the "Premier Festival des Cultures Vaudou" - the first Vaudou Culture Festival, the Haitian artist paints the walls in the
compound of the highest spiritual figure of Vaudou, the Dagbo Hou Non. He also installs there a large group of sculptures entitled Spirit
Catchers.
Atlanta, Georgia 1996: To embellish the cultural program on the periphery of the Olympiads, the Haitian artist installs, instead of Greek divinities, a group of 30 bronze heads entitled "The Vaudou Parthenum". At first sight these made a stimulating contrast to the classical architecture
of the southern capital.
The year 2000: Duval-Carrie enters into the prestigious Oxford History of Western Art as one of ten artists chosen to represent Africa and the
Caribbean in the chapter devoted to "alternative centers".
After the enumeration of these creations -which subvert the modes of representation of old religions, no one a should be surprised to see the
art of Edouard Duval-Carrie associated with the spirituality of his country of origin. Duval-Carrie is an exemplary representative of a group of
artists inscribed in the mode of the western art markets, yet due to their references to little known mythologies, they bring an "alternative"
touch to what is produced in these places which are traditionally associated with innovative esthetic movements. It is in this manner that
these artists are incorporated into what is considered avant-garde currents that have dominated the esthetics of the latter part of the last
century. To state that this Haitian artist looks seriously at the popular culture of his country of origin may suggest that his art is "more authentic". The existing plurality of "centers" reflects the reality of what is considered a global market and in a sense it integrates the heterogeneity
of cultures, serving as a basis of inspiration in the commercialization of what is considered "Western Art".
It is both an esthetic and economic position that the artist playfully designates in a neologism borrowed from the musical domain: "Have you
heard of World Music? There is World Painting now and I think I'm playing the part quite well!" Whether one refers to "alternative centers" or
"world painting", both terms point to an antagonism between, in one part, regional authenticity, ethnic or/and social (when talking of the
imaginary landscape) versus the dominant, capitalist, metropolitan culture (when speaking of commercialization). This is only to point that
the works of Edouard Duval-Carrie reflect, through subversive images, on the actual modes of production and also on esthetic concerns.
Contrary to the orthodox ways of most monotheist religions, Vaudou has no qualms about its origins which are bathed in syncretism. The
image of the "return to Africa" by a voyage underwater is an essential paradox to the understanding of the spiritual experience of a migrant.
Duval-Came illustrates this transitory and dangerous position in most of the paintings in this exhibition by his incessant use of the spirit-laden
boats. This mythic voyage between worlds is certainly more unstable than the nostalgia of the "paradise lost" dear to the Judeo-Christian
culture. In the world of this artist, looking back has its hazards; to reach Duval-Carrie's paradise depicted here in a garden, one has to go
through the monster's mouth. Connoisseurs of European art will appreciate the reference to Bomarzo's garden in Italy where there is a real
risk of encounters with voracious crocodiles.
The cultural baggage brought by his boat people, who do not have the luck of being on the good political side like their Cuban counterparts,
contains nevertheless a symbol with a double significance: the Royal Palm. It represents the "Poteau Mitan" the central post, pivotal to
vaudou ceremonies and also the tree of liberty for the Haitian people. It -will always remind Haitians that the Republic of Haiti was the first
state to realize the liberty for all slaves, equality for all it's citizens and the fraternity of all races in the New World.
But Edouard Duval-Carrie conscientiously avoids the pitfalls of a paradisiacal vision of the "revolutionary" past. The play on words "Crocs and
Ladders" is far from being a joke. The substitution of "snakes" by "crocs" sends us back to the founding myth of the Haitian nation - the
so-called "Ceremonie du Bois Caiman". In the two paintings "Crocs and Ladders" and the "Apparition dans un Jardin", a black man's face
surrounded by sparring symbols is evident. The ladders of course lead nowhere. Like other symbols, the crocodiles/caimans symbolize an
idyllic usage of the past and of course produce no identity for the central figures. To these heads surrounded by unintelligible symbols corresponds the empty but mutilated background of the painting "Passage pour le Hero". The myth of the hero, which was lavished on the revolutionary generals, has only served to enlarge the role of the Haitian army and it's glorious past. The reality though is far from glorious. Since
the independence of that nation, the Haitian army has relentlessly exploited the people they liberated.
The alternative added by Duval-Carrie to the avant-garde movement is not solely reduced to the mere fact that he is a Haitian. The artist can
also be situated in the Ibero-American tradition. The numerous exhibitions of his work in that part of the world underline the interest in his
art in these "alternative centers". It is important to be noted in passing that the discovery in New York of what is now referred to as the "first
generation" of so-called Haitian naives is not uniquely the product of the joint efforts of the pope of the European avant-garde - Mr. Andre
Breton with the American founder of the Centre D'Art in Port au Prince - Mr. Dewitt Peters, but also through the active support of Cuban
artists, in particular Wilfredo Lam. The works of Duval-Carrie render in images the cultural message that the Cuban intellectuals, Lezama Lima
and Severo Sarduy had designed in the theoretical concepts of the Latin-American baroque.
The works "Democratic en Marche" and "La Reine Des Ambaglos" are representations of women whose bodies are engraved -with symbols,
as if they had been tattooed with the Veve, arcane signs representing the vaudou spirits. But in Duval-Carrie's case the signs are not those
sacred symbols. Thus the "Reines des Ambaglos", queen of the under water spirits loses her identity, and in the process, the support she
provides the migrants becomes rather dubious. The proliferation of signs and dots over the allegory of democracy serves only to hide the
emptiness that is the basis of what she represents. More so, the writing on the painting proclaims movement, but she remains an immutable
statue sustaining those words. What moves in this particular work are the rebelling slaves led by the infamous Baron Samedi, the Vaudou
spirit of Death. And all is set in a lush tropical landscape. The viewer is thus led to believe that the artist's vision is only that of a bitter realization that two centuries of struggle were empty of the ideal of Democracy for his homeland. This is very true of the Baroque tradition which
puts in question the functioning of the allegory generalizing the messages of this image. In his writings on the Baroque, Severo Sarduy points
out that the exuberance of tattoos paradoxically expresses the disappearance of the bearer's body. Thus, by analogy, the supposedly Haitian
scene depicted in that particular work is no more than another episode of the evacuation of any allegory in the history of the globalization
which has continued for the past five hundred years.
In his famous conference cycle given in 1957 at the Centro de Altos Estudios del Institute Nacional de la Habana, published later as "La Expresion Americana", Jose Lezama Lima underlines the highly subversive character of the colonial art of Spain's empire. According to this brilliant
essayist of the neo-baroque there was an Amerindian of the so-called Cuzco school, named Kondori. His production would best illustrate the
deep desire to transgress the conceptual limits imposed by European "how-to" manuals designed for overseas artists. His ornaments and
friezes for altarpieces and his decorative elements for church portals are invaded by Inca symbols and other depictions of local flora and
fauna. In this way, what was purported to glorify the mysteries or the heroes of the Christian faith are transformed to a form of syncretism,
which illustrates the confrontation between the different signs and symbols conditioning the new colonial society. In the New World the art
of the European Counter Reform was thus transformed in an art of the Counter Conquest.
All of Edouard Duval-Carries paintings are quite lavishly framed in wood covered with a large gamut of different materials. The work "Crocs
and Ladders" demonstrate clearly how the painter inverted the process established by his precursors. There is no more a delimitation
between the painting and it's frame. What could be interpreted as an affirmation of liberty achieved by contemporary art in opposition to any
type of rules, could now be read as a deep disillusionment, another baroque concept, vis a vis symbols devoid of sense.
The eclecticism, paired with the "world painting" concept that characterizes Duval-Carrie's work is not a gratuitous exercise. Duval-Carrie has
subverted all iconic elements used in his work. The feast of color and motifs he brings us reveals, contrary to what could be thought as
evident, two very unsettling messages: the piercing emptiness of his canvases which are covered -with contradictory signs and the solitude
of depicted individuals whose eyes are looking in vain for sense in those symbols. The universality conveyed in those symbols guaranties that
solitude should not be read as an exclusive experience of his black men's heads. These worldly paintings point out squarely that it was the
slaves who had the scary privilege to have been forced first into a migration which has become today a global phenomenon.
:: Advocacy Award ::
From newtimesbpb.com
Originally published by New Times Broward-Palm Beach Aug 12, 2004
©2004 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.
More at Museum of Art Ft. Lauderdale
Irvin Lippman has helped change the landmark museum
BY MICHAEL MILLS
Only a year or so ago, the Museum of Art (MoA) in Fort Lauderdale seemed a lost cause. With dwindling revenues, a leadership crisis, and
increasingly lackluster shows, the museum was beginning to seem at best troubled, at worst culturally marginalized -- a white elephant in the
middle of downtown.
Then came "Saint Peter and the Vatican: The Legacy of the Popes," an unlikely savior for an institution in the heart of what's widely perceived
as a hotbed of hedonism, permissiveness, and other threats to the social structure. (Whether South Florida in general and Broward County in
particular make up a liberal bastion worthy of conservative contempt is a subject for further debate. Don't get me started.) More to the point
-- for MoA, anyway -- then came Irvin M. Lippman, whose appointment as executive director dovetailed nicely with the Vatican show.
Lippman, a veteran of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Art in
Columbus, Ohio, didn't officially take charge until October 1, but the papal preview heralded
his arrival with a last-minute announcement to the media; press releases were even passed out
among the journalists waiting to see the exhibition. The timing was impeccable: If "Saint Peter
and the Vatican" failed -- a possibility, however farfetched -- Lippman would be able to distance
himself from it; and if it lived up to expectations as a record-breaking success, the show would
be associated, at least in some minds, with the new director.
The latter scenario played out, of course, and MoA was saved the embarrassment of a highprofile flop. Thanks in part to "The Legacy of the Popes," Lippman now has a good shot at
carving out his own legacy, and so far, he's doing so quietly but effectively. Earlier this year, the
museum showcased the work of Cuban-born painter Enrique Martínez Celaya in a small but
exceptional exhibition, one of MoA's best in a long time. It was followed by an inspired double
show pairing the photography of Ansel Adams with that of Clyde Butcher.
As the first anniversary of the new director's hiring approaches, there are other encouraging
signs. MoA's dramatically overhauled website may still need some fine-tuning, but it's a major
improvement over the old one. Hours of operation have been tinkered with as well, with the
museum closing on Tuesdays instead of Mondays and staying open until 9 p.m. on Thursdays.
And through the end of August, admission is free.
From "The Indigo Room": It gives up its secrets only grudgingly.
But easily the most impressive innovation during Lippman's short tenure is the creation of an
artist-in-residence program. The first artist so designated is Edouard Duval-Carrié, who was
born in Haiti (in 1954), raised in Puerto Rico, and educated in Canada and France. He now lives
and works in Miami.
"Nepotism: The Art of Friendship"
On display through November 7. Call 954-525-5500.
Where: The Museum of Art, 1 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale
One of Duval-Carrié's contributions as artist in residence is "The Indigo Room or Is Memory Water Soluble?" This mixed-media installation,
which opened on May 1 and will remain in place through the end of the year, is an ambitious affirmation of the artist's roots in a country
steeped in mystery, ritual, and social and political turmoil. Instead of turning to the pastoral idylls and ebullient village scenes that preoccupy
so many of his fellow Haitian artists, Duval-Carrié delves into the darker aspects of his heritage. Voodoo is never far from his mind.
The installation is a room-sized work for a very small room, as in the elevator foyer adjacent to the museum's main lobby, which has been
dimmed and painted a deep blue that's lightly mottled to suggest water. (Even the restroom doors have been painted and relabeled in
Creole: Fanm and Nonm.) The one full wall in the space features a conglomeration of light boxes -- three long, vertical rectangles, surrounded
by nearly a hundred small squares -- that commemorate, in various ways, the bicentennial of Haitian independence. The boxes contain an
assortment of items such as photographs and plastic miniatures of animals, plants, and other objects. The piece also spills onto the ceiling,
where there are nine more illuminated panels, and into a small alcove to the right of the entrance, where disembodied hands reach out from
the walls surrounding a radiant bust of a creature that resembles the mythical gorgon Medusa.
"The Indigo Room" is undeniably atmospheric, with its softly glowing palette of blues, yellows, and greens suggesting serenity even as the
content of the piece chronicles the relentlessly turbulent history of Duval-Carrié's homeland. But for all its cultural baggage, it's also a near
hermetic work, a highly personal piece that gives up its secrets only grudgingly.
Duval-Carrié's other big artist-in-residence project is no less personal but much more accessible: "Nepotism: The Art of Friendship." The artist
drew on the work of two dozen other artists he knows and/or admires for this group show, which takes up most of MoA's first floor. There are
35 pieces, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, videos, and installations.
The artist turned curator doesn't provide much of a context for his selections other than a statement on the museum website (if there's also
a brochure, I didn't run across it): "There has always been among artists a level of resentment, particularly when you are not chosen in a
certain show, especially when you are invited to submit and then you are rejected," the statement reads. "And, there is always talk as to why
one and not another got in... always very confusing. I know it is difficult to organize a show; there is too much, or not enough, space, etc. I find
artists always accusing the curators of museums of some sort of nepotism of their friends. So I decided to play on that."
Based on the works included in "Nepotism," Duval-Carrié's sensibility is characterized by a healthy eclecticism, and he has a good eye for
placement. He eases visitors into the show with Angel Maker, a spiky lead sculpture by John la Huis near the entrance to the museum, and
Maritza Molina's Conquering Space, a roughly five-minute video shown on a large screen in the lobby.
They're followed by a bracing trio: the shifting music and imagery of Lionel Saint Pierre's video Vision Test, played on a wall-mounted
flat-screen monitor; Carolina Sardi's sculpture Rising Line, a thin steel obelisk that's 20 or so feet tall; and the delicate installation Larrabee's
Echo, by Karen Rifas, which consists of small dried leaves attached to thin strings hanging from the underside of the museum's grand
staircase.
Other than Duval-Carrié's taste, there's not much rhyme or reason evident in the flow of the show. I suspect, for instance, that the artistcurator displayed three huge pieces -- an oil portrait by Damian Sarno, an acrylic collage by Carlos de Villasante, and a mixed-media work by
Sergio Garcia -- side by side simply because they're all the same size and shape and look good together. And he's right: The juxtaposition is
an apt one, and it also plays nicely off the adjacent wall's grouping of four medium-sized abstracts by Jose Alvarez, who overlaps big, earthycolored slabs of mineral crystals and resin on wooden panels.
Among Duval-Carrié's other winners: Light Made Visible, Bhakti Baxter's string-and-nail construction that forms a sort of minimalist mandala;
the explicitly political Betraying the Youth, in which Macuria Monolanez connects three massive wooden doors with hinges, paints screaming
figures onto their fronts, and affixes photographs and paperwork relating to the juvenile justice system onto the back sides of the doors; and
the vaguely unnerving Dresden Tongue, by an artist identified only as Miralda, who wall-mounts seven large, molded-plastic tongues of
various colors and lights them from within. And for sheer textural appeal, it's hard to match Glexis Novoa's Endurance City, a pair of roughly
three-foot-square marble panels with a sort of alien cityscape rendered in graphite.
You'd be hard-pressed to uncover any sort of artistic agenda in "Nepotism," which is exactly the point. While it might be nice to have a bit of
biographical information about the artists Duval-Carrié included, it's also a relief not to have to wade through some creaky aesthetic justifications for his choices. A show like this invariably includes both hits and misses -- so what? I hope Irvin Lippman makes the Artist-in-Residence
program a tradition that he and the Museum of Art can justifiably embrace with pride.
Little Haiti | Miami, Florida [De Paso]
Escrito por: Dindy Yokel el 10 de Noviembre de 2008 | 3:59 pm
Miami es famosa por sus playas, vida nocturna y, ahora, por ser uno de los epicentros del arte mundial. Pero un elemento aún más interesante
en esta metrópolis emergente es el conjunto de pequeñas comunidades que son versiones completamente articuladas de las culturas y
países de América Latina y el Caribe. Se puede ver el cambio sutil en Ingrid mientras ondea una mascada amarilla como pase de matador en
plaza; después enciende un puro, señal de que un espíritu entró a su cuerpo. “Si creemos en los espíritus, entonces obtendremos lo que
necesitemos en el futuro”, dice Jean, la entelequia que habla a través de Ingrid. Otro “cambio energético” revela que ahora Ingrid está ocupada
por el espíritu de Erzuli Freda, un ser puramente
femenino. Después se retira a su trono en el
rincón mientras rocía perfume sobre su cuerpo y
el de los hombres en la habitación, haciendo caso
omiso de las mujeres presentes.
En Little Haiti, Florida, hay muchos que ofrecen
celebrar las ceremonias religiosas tradicionales
haitianas. Por ejemplo, la Botanica Vierge Miracle
& St. Philippe, de Elsie, quien tiene su propio
templo en Haití, Societé Patience. Aquí se venden
hierbas frescas que prometen traer buena suerte
al comprador, como el anís y la albahaca (oux, en
creole). A la vuelta de la esquina, en la calle 59, se
encuentran la tienda Halouba y su dueño, el
famoso Papa Paul. En estos comercios se pueden
comprar velas, polvos, fragancias, mascadas, ron
blanco y ropa haitiana. Pero los conocedores
indican que Ingrid Llera es la auténtica serviteur o
sacerdotisa-curandera de la zona. En 1980 llegó en
barco de Puerto Príncipe, sola, a los 16 años. El
viaje duró 11 días, pero estaba segura que llegaría Los niños de Notre Dame D’Haiti durante una celebración a la Virgen de Guadalupe (izq.).
con bien. Tras revisar mis credenciales y decidir Hay cuatro primarias en Little Haiti, incluyendo Edison Park, cuyo equipo de ajedrez fue campeón nacional de EUA en 2008.
Foto de Raúl Touzón
que mi interés era genuino después de días y días
de convivencia, Ingrid aceptó que presenciáramos y fotografiáramos una “auténtica” ceremonia vudú.
“Es como una nación paralela enterrada dentro de esta civilización”, comenta Alicia Restrepo, originaria de Colombia y dueña de una galería
de arte, Etra Fine Art. Un país dentro de otro país que abarca 33 manzanas al norte del Design District de Miami. Este barrio originalmente se
llamaba Lemon City, pero se dio a conocer oficialmente como Little Haiti tras un incremento de la inmigración haitiana a mediados de la
década de los setenta. Fue llamado de esta manera por Viter Juste, de 86 años, reconocido líder de la comunidad y considerado el padre de
Little Haiti; es el editor de Haiti-Florida (un periódico en creole) y padre de seis hijos, entre ellos el famoso fotógrafo del Miami Herald, Carl
Juste.
Este influjo de inmigrantes, semejante al de los cubanos, se debió a la tiranía del doctor François Duvalier (también conocido como “Papa
Doc”), elegido presidente en 1957. En 1964, Papa Doc se autonombró “presidente vitalicio” y, al morir, su hijo Jean-Claude (conocido como
“Baby Doc”) tomó el cargo y llevó al país a la ruina financiera al interesarse solamente por las clases altas.
La posibilidad de una “vida mejor” en Estados Unidos era atractiva y Florida es el punto de entrada más cercano, por lo que se volvió la puerta
natural. Desafortunadamente, los haitianos no fueron considerados refugiados políticos, como los cubanos, quienes incluso hoy en día sólo
tienen que poner un pie en tierra firme para ser aceptados como residentes estadounidenses. Tras unos 20 años durante los cuales los haitianos llegaban en la noche por mar, escondidos en las áreas de almacenamiento de los barcos o en los neumáticos de los aviones, la
inmigración a Florida ha disminuido porque, de ser descubiertos, son detenidos y enviados al Krome Detention Center, tras lo cual son
devueltos a su país.
Amanda, una de las hijas de Ingrid, tiene el “llamado”. Sus compañeros de escuela le preguntan sobre su cultura vudú. Algunos sienten miedo.
Otros preguntan si es brujería.
La mayor parte del Caribe fue colonia hasta mediados de los sesenta del siglo XX, pero Haití tuvo la única revuelta exitosa de esclavos en la
historia. El levantamiento empezó en 1791 y la isla ya era independiente en 1804. Como resultado, a lo largo del siglo XIX, el país estuvo
aislado del mundo. Al independizarse, esta colonia era la más rica del mundo, la joya de la época imperial. Producía dos terceras partes del
café del mundo, 74 millones de kilogramos de azúcar al año, vastas cantidades de añil y pieles, y aproximadamente cinco millones de
franceses vivían de ese comercio. Este, a su vez, dependía de una gran cantidad de mano de obra. Unos 20 000 esclavos morían cada año. En
la última década del siglo XIX un gran número de africanos llegaron de Angola, Benín, Togo e incluso Sierra Leona.
“Durante la trágica diáspora de la era de la esclavitud, los africanos traían consigo sus creencias religiosas –dice Wade Davis, escritor de
National Geographic y autor del reconocido libro sobre vudú en Haití La serpiente y el arco iris–. Los dueños de los esclavos intentaban
separar a los individuos de sus grupos lingüísticos, tribales y familiares, pero las semillas de las creencias africanas sobrevivieron en el Nuevo
Mundo y, dependiendo de la zona, adoptaron diferentes formas: la santería, que incluye elementos importantes del catolicismo, floreció en
lugares como República Dominicana y Cuba; el hoodoo se arraigó en el sur de Estados Unidos”.
Para acoger a la población inmigrante de Haití en Miami, Sant La (Haitian Neighborhood Center) fue fundado en 2000 bajo la premisa del
dicho haitiano de “la primera puerta que toques”. Proporciona servicios a 18 000 residentes haitianos de Little Haiti y otros lugares. Apoya a
los individuos y familias que empiezan una nueva vida en el sur de Florida. Los servicios de este centro comunitario incluyen talleres financieros, apoyo contable, capacitación en administración, apoyo a la comunidad y educación, trámites de documentos y servicios de información
sobre salud.
De acuerdo con un informe de 2005 (Brookings Institute), la población haitiana en el condado Miami-Dade es de 95 669 habitantes. Ambas
poblaciones reciben servicios de Sant La. El mismo informe indica que el ingreso promedio de los hogares de las familias haitianas en la
ciudad de Miami (que incluye Little Haiti) es de 20 000 dólares. Un tercio de las familias gana menos de 18 000 dólares al año, lo que rebasa
apenas en 5 000 dólares el nivel de “pobreza” de EUA en 2007. De cualquier manera, estas cantidades son mucho, muchísimo mejores que el
ingreso anual per cápita en Haití, que se reduce a 400 dólares. Los residentes en Miami están empleados principalmente en puestos de la
industria del servicio, incluyendo los niveles bajos, organizaciones de gobierno, mantenimiento, la construcción, el transporte y los servicios
de apoyo a la salud.
La arquitectura de “casa de galletas” en colores pastel del Caribe decora Northeast 2nd. Av., la principal arteria de Little Haiti, junto con restaurantes que sirven comida tradicional de la isla: carne asada, maíz, cocos y mangos. La mayoría de los restaurantes sólo ofrece comida para
llevar, incluyendo el conocido Chef Creole. Pero la comida no es precisamente lo que atrae a los visitantes a este pequeño país dentro de otro.
Es el “lado oscuro” del vudú el que convoca a los curiosos y temerosos visitantes a esta zona casi fantasmal de Miami.
Al cruzar la calle 54 para llegar a Botanica Halouba, se ven las ventanas oscuras, llenas de objetos extraños y polvo. La habitación principal
está en penumbra y Papa Paul es como una aparición sentado tras el mostrador más alejado. Aún se percibe el olor de humo de la ceremonia
de la noche anterior. Sobre su cabeza hay hileras de botellas llenas de polvos de colores, etiquetadas a mano con nombres indescifrables.
Papa Paul parece renuente a explicar a un extraño cuál es el uso de estos preciados gránulos. Otro muro está lleno de velas multicolores, cada
una con un uso y significado secretos. Los anaqueles rebosan de artículos, muñecos vudú, ropa, instrumentos musicales y toda clase de
objetos que no puedo identificar. Después de platicar un rato, Papa Paul hace un gesto para que lo siga al peristilo en la parte de atrás,
pasando una habitación para consultas privadas. Las ofrendas de alimentos siguen ahí, así como los remanentes de las velas y una sensación
abrumadora de sobrenaturalidad que provoca escalofríos.
“La gente sigue pensando que la religión del vudú es como un culto de magia negra –dice Wade Davis–. Pero, preguntémonos, ¿cuáles son
las grandes religiones del mundo? Están el islam, el cristianismo, el judaísmo, budismo, hinduismo… ¿Pero qué continente hemos dejado de
mencionar? La respuesta, por supuesto, es África, al sur del Sahara. La suposición tácita es que estos habitantes negros no tenían creencias
religiosas. Por supuesto que las tenían. Todas las culturas tienen religión. El vudú no es un culto de magia negra. Por el contrario, es un destilado de muchas creencias religiosas africanas”.
“Utilizamos el término vudú de manera incorrecta –continúa–. En realidad es un reflejo de las ideas ancestrales africanas sobre la relación
entre los vivos y los muertos. El sacerdote vudú es alguien que está familiarizado con la práctica, carismático, efectivo y que puede atraer
seguidores. Hay una relación dinámica entre los vivos y los muertos, al igual que en la mayoría de las culturas y religiones. Los arquetipos de
Haití son los 401 espíritus del panteón vudú. Está Erzulie, la diosa del amor, Ogoun, el dios de la guerra, y Legba, el espíritu de comunicación.
Cada arquetipo está representado por un dios”.
A pesar de todos los líos conceptuales, o quizá debido a ellos, Little Haiti ahora es vibrante y está llena de color y arte contemporáneo.
Muchos artistas llegan a vivir aquí, incluyendo a Jude Papaloko y otros provenientes de Haití, América Latina y otras islas del Caribe. Incluso
de Polonia. Esta es un área de muchos renacimientos sutiles, incluyendo el nuevo complejo cultural junto al Mercado Haitiano, construido en
la década de los ochenta, a manera de réplica moderna del famoso Mercado de Hierro de la isla, en el centro de Puerto Príncipe. En el
mercado, que reabrió apenas a finales del verano pasado, se venden frutas, verduras y artesanías. El centro cultural estará en funcionamiento
antes de la inauguración de Art Basel, a celebrarse en diciembre de este año, e incluirá un teatro y una plaza al aire libre, así como obras de
reconocidos artistas haitianos y caribeños.
Edouard Duval-Carrié es tal vez el artista haitiano más reconocido hoy en día. Se mudó a Miami en 1992 después de vivir en París y Nueva
York. Su estudio se encuentra en el mismo edificio que la Alianza Cultural Haitiana y vale la pena invertir varias horas para visitarlo. “Las creencias tradicionales y la historia de la religión haitiana son las fuentes de información para mi obra”, dice Duval-Carrié. Su obra cuenta la “triste”
historia del comercio de esclavos, la cual desarrolla en un contexto contemporáneo. “Apenas he empezado a rascar la superficie de todo este
drama”, les dice a sus visitantes. Actualmente es el curador de una gran exposición que se realizará en Art Basel Miami Beach, en 2008, llamada
“El archipiélago caribeño: satélite de Basel”, que incluirá música, artes visuales, performance y danza, y se llevará a cabo en el nuevo Centro
Cultural Haitiano en la calle 59.
Notre Dame d’Haiti es sólo una de las docenas de iglesias del barrio pero, con el sonoro y sabio Padre Bernard y el joven y poderoso Padre Reginald a
cargo, es tal vez la que tiene una visión más contemporánea y ciertamente la que atrae la mayor multitud. Este sábado los parroquianos se
preparan para una procesión que celebrará a la Virgen de Guadalupe. Gabby, Maggy y Jean decoran un camión con flores y hojas que llevará
la imagen de la Virgen por las calles de Little Haiti esa misma noche. Hay niños pequeños vestidos de blanco, como ángeles riendo, que corren
por el atrio de la iglesia. También hay hombres y mujeres vestidos elegantemente de ese mismo color. La procesión oscilará, como la
dicotomía de toda la vida en Haití, entre la reverencia y la celebración. El domingo miles de personas llegan a Notre Dame d’Haiti para
celebrar una misa y honrar a quienes recientemente se graduaron de las escuelas y de los programas de lectura. “Hoy se celebran los derechos
humanos porque festejamos la graduación de personas que durante 45, 65 y 75 años no sabían escribir su nombre”, mencionó el Padre
Bernard.
Faidherbe Boyer (Fedo para la familia y los amigos) llegó a los 16 años a Nueva York, en 1978, y se mudó a Miami después de la universidad.
Tiene una compañía de traducción que fundó hace siete años (Creoleetrans) con clientes en el sur de Florida, Boston, California, Nueva York,
Luisiana y Haití. Boyer, su esposa, la reconocida autora Edwidge Danticat, y su hija Mira viven en Little Haiti en una encantadora casa llena de
libros y arte haitiano. Todas las obras de su casa, según Danticat, están elaboradas por artistas que conoce personalmente y con quienes
siente una conexión.
Boyer menciona el bajo índice de alfabetismo de los haitianos y señala que la radio y televisión son los vehículos publicitarios elegidos por
las compañías que tienen como objetivo llegar a la población de Little Haiti. Explica que quienes llegaron a Estados Unidos sin saber leer y
escribir creole no conocen su lengua nativa e intentan aprender a leer y escribir en inglés, porque ven esto como la única forma de emplearse
en su nación adoptiva. En Haití, hablar en creole siempre ha constituido un estigma. Sólo recientemente se aceptó como uno de los idiomas
oficiales.
Wade Davis, quien ha documentado la evolución histórica y el alarmante ritmo de desaparición de muchas lenguas del mundo, explica:
“Siempre han existido ideas erróneas sobre el creole haitiano; se cree que es una forma corrupta del francés. De hecho, el creole es un francés
truncado para ajustarse a la métrica del habla africana. Es un lenguaje extraordinariamente rico en metáforas. Y si aceptamos que las lenguas
van y vienen en el tiempo, que se desarrollan y evolucionan, debemos reconocer que el creole haitiano no es francés mal hablado”.
Edwidge Danticat es una entre muchos autores que han dejado testimonio escrito en los muros del pasillo superior de la Libreri Mapou
después de una lectura o visita al lugar. Jean-Marie Denis, que se hace llamar Jan Mapou, salió de Haití en 1972, y llegó inicialmente a Nueva
York, donde pasó 12 años a cargo de una organización de artes escénicas llamada Societé Koukouy (luciérnaga, en creole) que existe todavía.
El compromiso de Mapou con la promoción de la cultura y el lenguaje de Haití no ha cesado y todavía se puede percibir en sus programas de
radio en la estación pública de Miami, en la estación haitiana de AM y en su librería. Su trabajo “oficial”, dado que la librería la administra su
esposa, Rita, es en el Aeropuerto Internacional de Miami, donde tiene a su cargo a 100 empleados y el funcionamiento de los estacionamientos del lugar, lo cual representa una operación con ganancias de 42 millones de dólares al año.
Libreri Mapou es la sede de conferencias y seminarios, además de lecturas de los escritores, y es el centro de la vida cultural de la zona. Pero
Mapou no siempre tuvo las libertades que ahora tiene en Estados Unidos. Pasó cuatro meses y tres días en Ft. Dimanche (la prisión más
famosa de Haití) cuando fue acusado de “comunista” junto con todos los empleados de la estación de radio donde transmitía y promovía la
aceptación del creole como lengua oficial y por la educación de las masas. Hoy en día, imparte clases de creole en la librería los sábados.
Llegó con emoción a la ceremonia que se realizará en la cochera de Ingrid. Su casa se encuentra en Homestead, en la parte sur de Miami. Lleva
varios años viviendo aquí, aunque maneja casi todos los días a Little Haiti para organizar y participar en actividades culturales. Adornado con
tributos a los espíritus, el lugar está lleno de velas, pociones, mascadas, pinturas, ofrendas frutales, vestimenta tradicional y toda la parafernalia de las ceremonias. No hay animales para sacrificio ni habrá sangre. El aroma de maíz inflado llena el aire junto con olores de nueces asadas,
pan, coco y café. El perro Snowflake va y viene entre las piernas de los miembros de la familia que está ocupada preparando el peristilo con
cosas que traen de la cocina y de afuera, donde colectan agua de lluvia en un gran tazón de cerámica. Se preparan para rendir tributo a San
Juan Bautista, como lo solicitaron los tres hombres que llegan con ron blanco, Jack Daniels y puros para honrar a los espíritus.
Después de dejar listo el escenario, Ingrid, sus hijas y su madre, a quien llaman Ya-Ya, pero de nombre Suzanne, van al piso superior para
cambiarse a la vestimenta blanca que deben portar todos los adultos y los vestidos de verano para Amanda y Annabelle. Las cuatro mujeres
bajan descalzas, con las cabezas cubiertas con mascadas, e invitan a todos al templo. Los hombres, de pantalones y camisas de vestir, con sus
aparatos de bluetooth parpadeando en sus oídos, se acomodan y las velas se encienden. Ingrid empieza a trazar una imagen en el piso con
un polvo amarillo, que después me entero es un grano molido. Luego sirve ron en cáscaras de limones y limas, y los invitados debemos
comprimir bolas de algodón y rezar por lo que deseamos. El algodón después se coloca en las limas y limones y se pone a flotar en el recipiente con agua de lluvia. Entonces empieza formalmente la ceremonia. Y los espíritus hacen su aparición. Al menos en teoría.
La anticipación se puede sentir en la habitación cuando el ron se vierte en el suelo y se le prende fuego. Ingrid y Ya-Ya se lavan las manos con
el ron y lo frotan en sus cuerpos. Invitan a los demás a hacer lo mismo para que atraigan la energía hacia su interior. Con un asson en mano
(jícara de yuca con una vela), Ingrid convoca a las ánimas. El espíritu en Ingrid le canta en creole a todos los visitantes de la habitación, tomados de la mano: “somos la misma sangre y no podemos dejarnos morir”.
<Via: National Geographic en español>