Haiti: History Embedded in Amber

Collaborating with students, Duval-Carrie visualizes Haiti

Click above image for an article about the project from the Duke Chronicle, or click here for PDF.

The Base Paint Project

MIAMI (AP) – A young boy reaching toward a glimmer of light took shape as Haitian graffiti artist Jerry Rosembert Moise sprayed paint on the wall of an impoverished neighborhood’s youth center.

It’s the kind of clearly hopeful image Moise developed after a catastrophic earthquake leveled his hometown of Port-au-Prince in January.

“I used to do caricatures, but now I try to be more realistic to get more attention for helping the country,” Moise said during a break from his painting Thursday night.

Moise, who gained international attention for his images after the earthquake, is among the artists taking advantage of the art fair crowds in Miami this week to highlight Haiti‘s ongoing struggles and raise funds for earthquake victims.

Thousands of collectors are in Miami for the annual Art Basel Miami Beach international art fair, and for other contemporary art fairs and museum exhibits.

Haitian artists and advocates hope they can gain influence and money for projects to improve the lives of more than 1.5 million people still homeless nearly a year after the earthquake, amid a cholera outbreak that has killed nearly 1,900 since October.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami scheduled an exhibit of portraits of Miami’s Haitian community by fashion photographer Bruce Weber specifically for the Art Basel crowds. Some of the images in “Bruce Weber: Haiti/Little Haiti” were shot in the same streets where Weber has photographed fashion magazine spreads.

The faces Weber has captured on film in Little Haiti since 2003 show the long-reaching effects of the earthquake and U.S. foreign policy.

A young girl detained for six months by U.S. immigration authorities won’t smile and fixes her eyes on the ground. A plumber with an intravenous tube running from his nose spreads his scarred hands on his hospital bed to show he can still work. Women cradling small children in their laps crowd shoulder to shoulder in church pews. A young couple in wheelchairs tentatively hold hands.

The Haiti Art Expo is selling new paintings by contemporary artist Philippe Dodard, along with artwork by other Haitian artists, to benefit earthquake relief efforts. At its opening Thursday night, Haitian voodoo drumming rivaled a DJ’s electronic beats in the next gallery.

Meanwhile, outside a downtown hotel, a cluster of large, colorful tents isn’t just for show. In the words of Antuan, the artist who organized the Base Paint Tents project with Fundacion Manos del Sur and the Step by Step Foundation, it is a “utilitarian art installation.”

The 10 heavy-duty tents will become classrooms for children living near the Port-au-Prince airport in a camp managed by Haitian soccer star Bobby Duval.

While Haiti desperately needs new housing and schools, reconstruction efforts have stalled with just a trickle of pledged international aid delivered to the Caribbean country. These tents were chosen for their mobility and ability to withstand harsh conditions for years.

“We see the reality of almost a year (since the quake) and the rubble is still there,” Antuan said. “The tents are going to be there for a long time.”

Duval‘s brother, Miami-based artist Edouard Duval Carrie, is among the 10 artists who painted the tents. Duval Carrie also organized a separate, two-part show at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, “The Global Caribbean II: Caribbean Trilogy.”

Along with works by Duval Carrie, Cuban artist Jose Bedia and Dominican artist Jose Garcia Cordero, it includes new textiles commissioned from three Haitian artists after the quake. Jean Joseph Jean-Baptiste stitched Voodoo-inspired fantasies into beaded and sequined flags, while deities emerge from layers of buttons and found objects sewn together by a pair who sign their work as Kongo Laroze.

Duval Carrie said he commissioned textiles instead of paintings because textile artists will employ more earthquake survivors.

“They’re like ateliers. They have 15 families working for them,” Duval Carrie said.

None of the textile artists could secure a visa to travel to Miami for the exhibit’s opening Friday. Ira Lowenthal of Men Nou Gallery, which represents Jean-Baptiste, blamed U.S. bureaucracy and said he planned to return to Port-au-Prince to argue on the artists’ behalf.

“The U.S. should be trying to promote what’s positive in Haiti, what makes Haiti special and why we should be helping Haiti,” Lowenthal said.

J Pat Carter

In this Nov. 30, 2010 photo, five of ten colorful tents, a utilitarian art installation organized the Base Paint Tents project with Fundacion Manos del Sur and the Step by Step Foundation, are on display for Art Basel in downtown Miami. The tents will become classrooms for children living near the Port-au-Prince airport in a camp managed by Haitian soccer star Bobby Duval. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)

<via: Washington Times>

Artist Eouard Duval Carrie’s work discusses his Haitian (and human) heritage.

HANDEYE MAGAZINE 04 Fall/Winter 2010

My intention is to help,” states Edouard Duval Carrie, “I was taught to be socially responsible; I want to figure out ‘what can I do?’” Through art and his activism, Duval Carrie reaches well beyond his Miami home and his Haitian birthplace, Using his art to create a sense of history and community, not just for himself, or even just for the Haitian Diaspora, Duval Carrie plays a part in a global, contemporary art network that stretches from Cologne to Benin.

Born in Port-au-Prince in 1954 and educated in Paris, Duval Carrie creates his art in a fascinating studio in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami. It was not until he was in his 30′s, during a return to Paris, that Duval Carrie” dis­covered” Africa. “I discovered the continent that had fed Haiti and I finally understood its attachment to Africa – so full of differences and surprises.” As an artist/cultural historian, Duval Carrie wants to create respect for the traditional religious practices (vodou) that allowed Haitians to maintain their identity and dignity, and to survive.

But even as he seeks to dispel misperceptions about vodou, he simultaneously highlights beliefs and even that Haitians would prefer forget. Duval Carrie insists that because of disavowal and. denial, Haitians continue “to make the same mistakes and rehash the same things over and over again, playing out the same roles.”

In this sense, Duval Carrie is more than a cultural his­torian; he is a cultural rebel. The artist wants to present the whole truth, not just accepted views of vodou. His provoca­tive and subversive work is a critique of mainstream culture, of the absurdities of Haitian history and life– the Hollywood stereotype of vodou, for example. But many nonetheless see a negative portrayal of vodou in his work. In a museum show a few years back about the sacred arts of Haiti, there were even misgiv­ings about including Duval Carrie’s work.

He admits that his work is a vehicle to clarify his own problems with vodou, but remains intent on pushing the envelope with new as­sociations. Certainly, Duval Carrie takes artistic license, appropriating and integrat­ing a wide array of sacred and profane symbols. He borrows from both Greek mythology and Buddhist iconography, and it is evident, as art histo­rian Donald Cosentino states, £hat Duval Carrie is seeking “to redeem (vodou) from its detractors through compara­tive analyses with other world religions.” However, despite its clearly Haitian “face,” the artist’s work is broad in its message and must be viewed within a larger, global frame­work. “The problems confront­ing Haiti are the same ones we are facing in the world today,” states Duval Carrie, “and by touching on the specific, I am reaching the universal.”

Although Duval Carrie works in his own tradition for his own purposes, his progres­sive embrace of new materi­als and his highly complex juxtapositions of old and new suggest an artist involved in 21st century art discourse. Working in sculpture, painting and multi-media installation, Duval Carrie’s productions touch multiple audiences at various levels. The first level of perception is the sensory one, as his exquisite works employ glorious color, glitter, com­pound textures and unusual materials, often presented in lush tropical landscapes.

But just like the religious practices that his oeuvre parallels, the work is imbued with extensive and condensed meaning, encrypting intricate relationships often difficult for even the well-informed viewer to decode. The work is seduc­tive with its adornment and prettiness, but a closer reading delivers a punch. Depictions of the horrors of oppression, fear and violence, alongside political satire, humor and sensuality, urge the viewer to shift back and forth from the obvious to the almost hidden, and to integrate the two.

Nevertheless, the work is so satisfying at the sensory level, so beautiful, that the complex pursuit of meaning is not tir­ing. Some of the works are hu­morous and others depict hopes and aspirations for the Haitian people. In the end, the work is about magic and perhaps, as such, the work is life-affirming. Duval-Carrie states, “I am try­ing to insert Haiti into moder­nity … to continue creating the vision of the country; it is not a naive vision – but complex and sophisticated. Haiti is a coun­try in evolution.” This artist is not just historian, or priest, but creator of the future. ~

Yolanda Sanchez, Ph.D., MFA, is a working artist and Director of Fine Arts & Cultural Affairs at Miami International Airport, Miami. Florida. She is also a licensed clinical psychologist currently serving as clinical director of the Miami Chapter of A Home Within, a national organization whose mission is to provide pro bono psycho­therapy for foster youth. Email her at ysanchez@miami-airport.com.

AUDRA D.S. BURCH reports for the Miami Herald.

The artists gathered in a warehouse in an industrial nook off 76th Street to paint, to make pretty the heavy vinyl tents, similar to those that so many Haitian earthquake survivors have called home for nearly a year.

Using paints sure to withstand the harsh conditions of the Haitian earth and sun, the artists reinterpreted the most basic concept of shelter, making tents into beautiful, pitched messages of hope that will be seen from the skies as visitors fly onto the island nation.

Born from a cast of South Floridians looking for a way to help Haiti, the Base Paint Tents will be exhibited beginning Tuesday so the discerning crowds of Art Basel can see the collection as meaningful art, but also as a flare that so much more needs to be done. It is just one of several cultural and artistic projects opening in South Florida in the days leading up to the international art fair, unrelated, yet bound by the daunting mission to keep Haiti’s woeful story from becoming last winter’s memory.

“We wanted to give the children of Haiti the gift of art but also show that the hurt is still there,” says artist and curator Antuan, who partnered with artist Elba Luis Lugo to paint a tent called Barcode Noir, the French colonial slave decree. “The tents will eventually serve as classrooms for the students in Haiti.”

COMMUNITY IMAGE

More organic than organized movement, art inspired by Haiti and the earthquake abounds this week, from a celebrated photographer’s look at Little Haiti to a graffiti artist’s spray-painted pleas and prayers created live in the streets of Miami to a fundraising art expo that intends to deliver homes to quake survivors. Even actor-humanitarian Sean Penn, who was among the first on the ground after the earthquake and helps to manage a massive tent city, will be in South Florida in support of his J/P Haitian Relief Organization or J/P HRO Haitian Relief Organization, which works to bring sustainable programs to Haiti.

“Art is an act of survival,” says Bonnie Clearwater, executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. “All the Haiti art that will be here during Art Basel keeps the story from being in the abstract, it tells what this all means in human terms.” Bruce Weber, who has made a handsome living photographing the perfections and imperfections of the famous, turned his unerring lens toward the Haitian community for his first solo museum show: Bruce Weber: Haiti/Little Haiti at MOCA, a 75-photo exhibit.

“Bruce Weber offers us a portrait of a community, images that show their strength and beauty and pride in heritage. It is a personal work that is very tactile, very intimate,” says Clearwater, who curated the show. “The exhibit also really brings awareness to the international art world of the issues that are still so pressing.”

HAITIAN OPERA

In his hodgepodge of an artist’s studio in Little Haiti, Edouard Duval Carrié fretted last week about his chaotic creative schedule. He still had to paint his tent for the Base Tent Projects, add the finishing touches for sets for Makandal, an upcoming Haitian opera, and there’s the matter of his own works of art — many imbued with the history and spirit of Haiti — to be showcased in several shows during Art Basel. So many projects of great social and artistic importance, so little time.

“Haiti is facing such drama and has such a long haul, everything we do collectively must be to keep it in the front of everyone’s mind,” Duval Carrié says in between a string of phone calls.

“The visual world is a huge part of Haiti’s story.”

The Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance is producing Global Caribbean II: Caribbean Trilogy, Focus on the Greater Antilles, which opens Friday at the Little Haiti Cultural Center. Curated by Duval Carrié, the exhibition features his pieces as well as those by Cuban artist Jose Bédia and Dominican artist José García Cordero.

That afternoon, excerpts of Makandal, the Harlem Stage-produced epic opera about 18th-century Haitian revolutionary Francois Makandal and the enduring legacy of colonization, slavery and 21st-century immigration, will be previewed at the center.

“This is a living story that tries to look at the humanity immigration, that immigrants may be poor but they bring something to this country,” Duval Carrié says.

MYSTICAL IMAGES

Next door, in the Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance space, a show of contemporary Haitian textiles including artist Jean Joseph Jean-Baptiste’s sequined and beaded tapestries will be presented. Kongo Laroze, a pair of artists who have reinterpreted the sequined vodou flag traditions with buttons and found objects, are also exhibiting their work.

Arts for a Better World is presenting a vast exhibition of 45 artists representing 13 countries exhibiting 400 works at SOHO Studios in Wynwood. Four artists from or living in Haiti will be included: Lika, Marie-Louise Fouchard, Asser Saint-Val and Gizou Lamothe. Lika, an artist of Greek heritage living in Haiti, is presenting a collection titled Realms, haunting, mystical images that blur the line between this world and that of the spirit.

“I was deeply moved by everything I saw and heard and felt during the earthquake. In some ways, the art just came out by itself,” says Lika, who lives in the hills near Petionville. “In seconds, more than 300,000 lost their lives. The paintings try to capture those lives. They are wandering around in the dust and wondering why people are not speaking to them. They don’t realize they are stuck between the worlds. They are frightened but also have a kind of wisdom.”

A SAFE SPACE

Back at the Iron Side warehouse, artists work to complete the 10 tents — each 15 by 20 feet with a door and windows — that will later become fully equipped, multipurpose classrooms amid the ruins and tent cities just two miles from the Port-au-Prince airport.

In a back room, one of the organizers, a Miami soccer mom, discusses how this ambitious project was born, now a partnership of Funacion Manos del Sur and Step by Step Foundation and the artists Antuan.

“I was at a soccer game and trying to think about how we could help the children of Haiti, how we could let them know that they are not alone,” says Paulina Montes, executive director of Fundación Manos del Sur, which helps underprivileged children in Latin America. “We knew we wanted to create a safe space.”

But that will cost money. They hope to raise about $10,000 in sponsorship for each tent — enough to send each with computers and supplies for the children.

Miami artist and musician Ruben Millares stood back to survey the “eye” and the poetry painted on his tent. He and artist Antonia Wright’s collaborative design is about possibilities and the power of language.

“Ours is all about education and literacy. We painted the words in English and Creole in hopes that the children will be curious about what it says,” he says. “This is also about keeping the message alive, Haiti needs our help.”

Among the painted words: Love, Peace, Hope, Prayer, Prosperity.

For the original report and a gallery of images by Patrick Farrell go tohttp://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/28/v-print/1947780/art-basels-gift-of-art.html#ixzz16eJfEEIL

Photo of Duval-Carrie from http://newshopper.sulekha.com/edouard-duval-carrie_photo_988327.htm

by: Jaclyn Giovis

Bored or delayed at the Miami airport? Check this out!

Miami International Airport on Thursday will unveil an art exhibit, called Hands of Haiti, from Haitian artists who have continued their craft despite challenges from the country’s devastating earthquake in January.

The exhibit, featuring more than 60 major works, will be on display for the first time ever at the airport’s South Terminal Gallery where it will stay until March 2011. It includes works of cut metal, woven sequined flags, beaded artwork on leather, sculptures made from discarded urban materials, carnival masks, clay pottery and photography.

The Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance, a non-profit foundation based in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, created the Haitian Art Relief Fund after the earthquake. The goal was to help preserve Haitian art salvaged from the devastation and to support the ongoing work of artists living in Haiti.

MIA’s South Terminal Gallery is located pre-security at the Terminal J International Greeter’s Lobby on the fourth floor mezzanine. <via: Sun Sentinel>

(Exhibition curator: Edouard Duval Carrie)

Hew Locke

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.

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.

Roberto Diago

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.

Arthur Simms

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.>

The Associated Press has published a profile of Haitian artist Edouard Duval-Carrié that focuses on the ways in which his work incorporates elements from Vodou beliefs and practices to represent the plight of Haitian immigrants to the United States, many of whom risk dangerous sea crossings to make it to Miami, when Duval-Carrié has been working for many years. Here are some excerpts from the lengthy article, which you can access through the link below.

The officers on deck confront the Voodoo love goddess with broad shoulders and stoic faces, eyes darkened by sunglasses. She pauses on the gangplank, barefoot but resplendent in a gold crown and ruffled pink dress.

The goddess in Haitian artist Edouard Duval-Carrie’s 1996 painting, “Ezili Intercepted,” is bewildered, bemused maybe, but not desperate. She seems to smooth her hair with bejeweled fingers. Ezili is notorious for charming the men in her path.

Duval-Carrie’s migrant deity is so different from the Haitian migrants photographed with U.S. or Caribbean authorities when their overcrowded vessels founder. Lying prone on boat decks or stretchers, they have no names, no power.

. . .

“The news is so dramatic that I’m pulled right back. When will there be a respite?” Duval-Carrie said recently in his studio in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood. “I wish it would go away and I could concentrate on something else.”

But the migrants keep coming, and there are always victims to grieve. The bodies of three women who perished when their overloaded sailboat capsized off South Florida in May were buried recently in a Miami-area cemetery beneath plaques reading “Unknown.” None of the 16 survivors professed to knowing them, and no relatives came forward to identify them.

“It’s one way I can give them importance and respect,” Duval-Carrie said. “There’s a total disrespect here for them.”

He strands the same cast of colorful gods in wooden boats or on rocky shores: the lord of the cemetery in his signature black top hat; the gatekeeper to the spiritual world; the god of healing; the love goddess who resembles Carmen Miranda; the coiled serpent god; temperamental twins; and the skeletal spirit of the dead

Their faces-sometimes serene, sometimes leering-comprise a dual warning. Authorities outside Haiti should respect the migrants’ courage, Duval-Carrie said. Meanwhile, Haiti is losing its identity through constant migration.

In two panels of a recently completed, silver-toned installation titled “Memory Without History,” finely dressed skeletons join the gods’ voyage.

“They’re all dead already,” Duval-Carrie said.

He paints migrants as an expatriate himself. He was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1954. His family fled the Duvalier regime for Puerto Rico when he was boy and did not return to Haiti until he was a teenager. The homecoming lasted a year before Duval-Carrie moved to New York to finish high school. He studied art in Montreal and Paris, then settled about 15 years ago in Miami, where he was delighted to find a part of the city called Little Haiti.

“He’s both within and without this profound Voodoo culture,” said Donald Cosentino, professor of world arts and cultures at UCLA. The university’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History is one of three museums in the past decade to showcase Duval-Carrie’s ongoing exploration of migration and Haitian Voodoo, a blend of Christian tenets and African religions.

“He knows profoundly the plight of his own people, but he also knows how that fits into American society,” Cosentino said.

Duval-Carrie first took up migration as a theme in 1989 for a Paris exhibition. “Altar of the Nine Slaves” shows nine green-headed men chained in Africa, crowded into a boat and then at work in sugar cane fields in Haiti.

For the complete article go to http://www.nj.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-9/125414653891810.xml&storylist=entertainment

The painting of Ezili as a migrant above is at the Bass Museum in Miami,