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April 13, 2016 The Skanner Page 9 News Haiti Artists Forge International Reputation With Art Made of Junk David McFadden Associated Press PORT-AU-PRINCE, Hai- ti (AP) — Amid a maze of car repair shops in Hai- ti’s gritty capital, Andre Eugene pitches a shred- ded tire he found atop a towering sculpture he built out of rusty engine parts, bed springs and other cast-off junk. “This is what I do: I work with the garbage of the world,” says Eugene, assessing the largest sculpture displayed at the entrance of his studio and open-air museum off a crumbling street cutting through some of Port-au-Prince’s poorest neighborhoods. The Haitian sculptor is a founding member of Atis Rezistans, a shifting collective of artists who recycle whatever useful scraps they can find to give a raw, physical shape to the spiritual world of Voodoo, or Vodou as the religion is known by Haitians, and weigh in “ directions, expanding the range of materials used and offering stun- ning new meanings for objects found in every- day life,” said Marcus Rediker, a collector of Haitian art and a distin- guished professor of At- lantic history at the Uni- versity of Pittsburgh. The materials that form the sharp-edged sculp- tures include automotive fragments, carved wood pieces, broken TVs, dis- carded toys and even real human skulls collected at a cemetery of mauso- leums where bones were scattered by grave rob- bers. Many of their artworks are a nod to Baron Same- di, the Vodou god of the dead, and his rambunc- tious offspring, Gede. Others offer a kaleido- scope of jarring images out of a Mad Max movie: sculptures of faces with spikes; masked figures resembling shrouded corpses; broken baby dolls fused with comput- This is what I do: I work with the garbage of the world on the country’s chronic political and economic troubles. While Haiti’s estab- lished galleries were slow to warm to the scrap sculptors of the capital’s impoverished Grand Rue neighborhood, bustling with furniture-makers and other craftsmen, the artisans working with recycled materials have been embraced by a num- ber of international art connoisseurs and aca- demics. Over the last de- cade, the work of Atis Rezistans has been ex- hibited in cities such as Paris, London, and Los Angeles. There are sculp- tures included in the collections of museums, including the Frost Art Museum in Miami. Haitian art has long had a reputation for imaginative richness, and wealthy internation- al collectors including Jacqueline Kennedy On- assis and filmmaker Jon- athan Demme sought out self-taught painters col- orfully evoking the ev- eryday lives of Haitians or depicting dreamlike scenes. And even though found-object creations have been part of the poor country’s art for de- cades, experts say there has been nothing like the in-your-face works of Atis Rezistans. “Atis Rezistans takes an old practice in new er motherboards. But it’s not all darkness. There’s plenty of evi- dence of playfulness and irreverent theatricality, such as a skull-topped figure with a stetho- scope, snake sculptures with scales of inlaid bot- tle caps and much frank sexual imagery. Perhaps their most ac- claimed collaborative creation has been a mash- up of high art-meets-de- veloping world called the “Ghetto Biennale.” Every two years, international artists come to the Grand Rue neighborhood in a kind of cross-cultural festival that leaves the door open for just about anything. The Ghetto Biennale takes a form developed for European art fairs and radically subverts it, according to Anthony Bogues, a Brown Univer- sity professor who co-cu- rated a 2011 exhibition of Haitian art at the Prov- idence, Rhode Island school. “Art for them is not about the elite but rather recognizing that art is a language in which Haiti speaks to itself and the world,” Bogues said of Atis Rezistans. Collaborations with overseas artists who come to Haiti have giv- en younger members of the collective chances to tap into art networks across the globe, while AP PHOTO/DAVID MCFADDEN Internationally-acclaimed salvage art pieces address a rich variety of political and spiritual themes In this April 4, 2016 photo a wooden snake with inlaid bottle caps hangs in an open-air museum and art workshop off a trash-strewn street cutting through some of the poorest neighborhoods in Port- au-Prince, Hiati. The snake was created in Haitian the Atis Rezistans workshop, who’s work has been exhibited in cities such as Paris, London, and Los Angeles. There are sculptures included in the collections of museums, including the Frost Art Museum in Miami. international artists are stimulated by the Haitian group’s creative process. “Their philosophy to turn trash into art, thus something seemingly worthless into something valuable, has inspired me,” said Alice Smeets, a Belgian artist who collab- orated with members of Atis Rezistans to create staged photographs in Haitian slums that depict figures from tarot cards. Eugene hopes that the praise gathered for the group he founded with Celeur Jean-Herard, who has since departed the collective, can now translate into enough earnings to upgrade his yard’s musty museum and improve the lives of members. and local youngsters dubbed “chil- dren of the resistance” who sculpt and paint. Though he has traveled the world with his art, Eu- gene still lives in a small concrete shack next to his Grand Rue work- shop and “Musee d’Art,” where many sculptures are caked with dust and swathed in cobwebs. Two turkeys and several cats were the only visitors one recent afternoon. He calls Atis Rezistans a social “movement” that should expand opportu- nities for its artists. “I don’t want to be fa- mous,” Eugene said in his rain-slicked concrete yard in the poor neigh- borhood, shortly after re- turning to Haiti from an exhibit of a major piece in Milan. “Step by step, I am looking to make mon- ey so we can improve our situation here.”
