Submitted by Bryan Schaaf on Mon, 01/04/2010 - 22:20.
Ghetto Biennale:
..
BY RICHARD FLEMING Special to The Miami Herald
.
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- On the Boulevard Jean Jacques Dessalines stands an enormous sculpture of Papa Legba, the vodou spirit guardian of entryways and crossroads. Some 25 feet high, it has been welded together from an abandoned truck chassis, with its head a battered oil drum. The rusty giant is an incongruous sight among the bustling street vendors and small businesses crowding this busy street in Haiti's capital. Behind Papa Legba are more sculptures, an uncountable tangle assembled from chunks of carved wood, ironing boards, car parts, lengths of scrap fabric, even human skulls. This army of gargoyles, most representations of the pantheon of African lwa still so present in the spiritual life of this country, are the work of the sculptors of the Grand Rue, a loose collective of artists born and raised in the dense slums here.
.
Their work is a spectacular combination of recycling and imagination. Although drawn from the same deep well of Afro-Caribbean culture as
traditionally exported examples of Haitian art, it looks nothing like them.
.
``When we first started going around the neighborhood and collecting stuff in order to work, people said we were crazy,'' says Céleur Jean Herard. `They said, `Look at all these useless metal parts they are taking.'Really, it was a struggle not to be discouraged.''
.
Herard and André Eugene, the Papa Legba sculptor, pioneered the Grand Rue phenomenon. Both once worked within the traditional economy of this neighborhood of artisans, carving wooden ashtrays, candy bowls and statuettes. Such tourist trinkets are still mass produced here for export to more popular Caribbean vacation destinations. The slum's narrow cinderblock alleys are filled with the sound of hammering and the scent of varnish.
.
This shared past spent struggling on the handicraft production line may be one reason why the sculptors of the Grand Rue are adamant that their work be taken as fine art, not compartmentalized as ``ethnic'' or ``outsider.'' Behind his sculpture garden, André Eugene lives in what he calls the E. Pluri Bus Unum Museum, three small rooms crowded with neighborhood art. Eugene says that after traveling to galleries and museums around the world, he was struck that only the wealthy seemed to build arts institutions and determine what should hang in them. In Haiti the exhibition and selling of art has generally been dominated by the tiny upper-class *boujwazi*.
.
``I had the idea of making a museum here in my own area, with my own hands, because the artists you see here never had their own thing. They always let the Big Man exploit them,'' Eugene says. With similar intentions, the Grand Rue sculptors spent three weeks in November and December hosting the first Ghetto Biennale. Assisted by two outside curators, they used the Internet to solicit project proposals from
international artists and selected 35 from more than 100 applications. But instead of bringing completed artworks, as at a traditional biennial, the chosen artists were asked to create work in the Grand Rue environment. For many, the harsh realities of life in a Caribbean slum meant completely reformulating their ideas. London-based Jesse Darling had wanted to build ``a trash church,'' a sacred space made of found materials.
.
``When I got to Grand Rue, the first thought was, `Well, what is waste
here?' '' Darling says. ``Every little fan grate, every little nothing has
been reincorporated into the structure of someone's home, the structure of somebody's life, reused, made to work again.'' Forced to reconsider her materials, she ultimately used hundreds of the tiny, discarded plastic sachets in which small servings of fresh water are sold on the streets. Hugo Moro, a Cuban-born artist based in Miami, says that despite a familiar Caribbean feeling he recognized from trips to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Haiti was a shock.
.
``It was a kind of terror,'' he says. ``The Grand Rue was definitely a
mind-blowing, unexpected level of poverty.'' Moro quickly realized that even the modest materials he had brought along were inappropriate for the environment. He describes his project, *7,000 Trees for Haiti*, as a version of the famous *7,000 Oaks* project by Joseph Beuys, the late pioneer of social-environmental artworks.
.
``I see it like somebody going to the Louvre 100 years ago and copying the masters.'' Moro says. ``I'm taking Joseph Beuys and attempting to recreate his piece for the Antilles.'' Haiti, he says, ``is the most obvious place to do a reforestation-based piece of work.'' Moro sees the time he spent in Port-au-Prince as the beginning of a long-term relationship. To continue it he is collaborating with the Lambi Fund of Haiti, a grass-roots not-for-profit dedicated, among other things,
to environmental causes.
.
Building long-term links with artists outside of Haiti was undoubtedly one
of the goals of this unique take on an art expo, even though Eugene, Herard and other Grand Rue artists have now traveled to show their work in Paris and London and, notably, at Florida International University's Frost Art Museum. Whether those connections will sustain is a question that may have to wait two years, until the next Ghetto Biennale. But especially after the recent influx of visiting artists from around the globe, nobody in the neighborhood calls the Grand Rue artists crazy anymore.
Recycling and Imagination Inspire Haitian Artistis
Ghetto Biennale:
..
BY RICHARD FLEMING Special to The Miami Herald
.
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- On the Boulevard Jean Jacques Dessalines stands an enormous sculpture of Papa Legba, the vodou spirit guardian of entryways and crossroads. Some 25 feet high, it has been welded together from an abandoned truck chassis, with its head a battered oil drum. The rusty giant is an incongruous sight among the bustling street vendors and small businesses crowding this busy street in Haiti's capital. Behind Papa Legba are more sculptures, an uncountable tangle assembled from chunks of carved wood, ironing boards, car parts, lengths of scrap fabric, even human skulls. This army of gargoyles, most representations of the pantheon of African lwa still so present in the spiritual life of this country, are the work of the sculptors of the Grand Rue, a loose collective of artists born and raised in the dense slums here.
.
Their work is a spectacular combination of recycling and imagination. Although drawn from the same deep well of Afro-Caribbean culture as
traditionally exported examples of Haitian art, it looks nothing like them.
.
``When we first started going around the neighborhood and collecting stuff in order to work, people said we were crazy,'' says Céleur Jean Herard. `They said, `Look at all these useless metal parts they are taking.'Really, it was a struggle not to be discouraged.''
.
Herard and André Eugene, the Papa Legba sculptor, pioneered the Grand Rue phenomenon. Both once worked within the traditional economy of this neighborhood of artisans, carving wooden ashtrays, candy bowls and statuettes. Such tourist trinkets are still mass produced here for export to more popular Caribbean vacation destinations. The slum's narrow cinderblock alleys are filled with the sound of hammering and the scent of varnish.
.
This shared past spent struggling on the handicraft production line may be one reason why the sculptors of the Grand Rue are adamant that their work be taken as fine art, not compartmentalized as ``ethnic'' or ``outsider.'' Behind his sculpture garden, André Eugene lives in what he calls the E. Pluri Bus Unum Museum, three small rooms crowded with neighborhood art. Eugene says that after traveling to galleries and museums around the world, he was struck that only the wealthy seemed to build arts institutions and determine what should hang in them. In Haiti the exhibition and selling of art has generally been dominated by the tiny upper-class *boujwazi*.
.
``I had the idea of making a museum here in my own area, with my own hands, because the artists you see here never had their own thing. They always let the Big Man exploit them,'' Eugene says. With similar intentions, the Grand Rue sculptors spent three weeks in November and December hosting the first Ghetto Biennale. Assisted by two outside curators, they used the Internet to solicit project proposals from
international artists and selected 35 from more than 100 applications. But instead of bringing completed artworks, as at a traditional biennial, the chosen artists were asked to create work in the Grand Rue environment. For many, the harsh realities of life in a Caribbean slum meant completely reformulating their ideas. London-based Jesse Darling had wanted to build ``a trash church,'' a sacred space made of found materials.
.
``When I got to Grand Rue, the first thought was, `Well, what is waste
here?' '' Darling says. ``Every little fan grate, every little nothing has
been reincorporated into the structure of someone's home, the structure of somebody's life, reused, made to work again.'' Forced to reconsider her materials, she ultimately used hundreds of the tiny, discarded plastic sachets in which small servings of fresh water are sold on the streets. Hugo Moro, a Cuban-born artist based in Miami, says that despite a familiar Caribbean feeling he recognized from trips to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Haiti was a shock.
.
``It was a kind of terror,'' he says. ``The Grand Rue was definitely a
mind-blowing, unexpected level of poverty.'' Moro quickly realized that even the modest materials he had brought along were inappropriate for the environment. He describes his project, *7,000 Trees for Haiti*, as a version of the famous *7,000 Oaks* project by Joseph Beuys, the late pioneer of social-environmental artworks.
.
``I see it like somebody going to the Louvre 100 years ago and copying the masters.'' Moro says. ``I'm taking Joseph Beuys and attempting to recreate his piece for the Antilles.'' Haiti, he says, ``is the most obvious place to do a reforestation-based piece of work.'' Moro sees the time he spent in Port-au-Prince as the beginning of a long-term relationship. To continue it he is collaborating with the Lambi Fund of Haiti, a grass-roots not-for-profit dedicated, among other things,
to environmental causes.
.
Building long-term links with artists outside of Haiti was undoubtedly one
of the goals of this unique take on an art expo, even though Eugene, Herard and other Grand Rue artists have now traveled to show their work in Paris and London and, notably, at Florida International University's Frost Art Museum. Whether those connections will sustain is a question that may have to wait two years, until the next Ghetto Biennale. But especially after the recent influx of visiting artists from around the globe, nobody in the neighborhood calls the Grand Rue artists crazy anymore.