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:: 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
