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.”