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:: 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 colorful figures shackled together walk through a dense African forest. The variety of figures are representative of the many African tribes enslaved in Haiti. The depiction of the characters is as varied as the tribes. The figures are also simulacrums of the gods and goddess within the Voodoo religion. A few of the figures are nude, painted only in solid colors; some with plumage on their heads and body; other are dressed 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 -
