Vodou Riche Exhibit – by Annie Hobbs
To be totally honest, i wasn’t expecting much on my arrival to Columbia’s first floor gallery in 1104 S. Wabash because I had seen the flyers and to me, the art wasn’t aesthetically or even emotionally appealing. However, my mind soon changed after I had had the art explained to me. This is a time when context apparently mattered to me. Without context, the art looks as though children could have done it, with the exception of the extraordinarly detailed beaded prayer flags. I mean, doll heads on sticks and in bottles, sculptures of little girls with glasses and combat hats on…Just wasn’t my thing, I guess, but when Page-Lieberman came in to give us a “tour,” I quickly changed my mind. I learned about how the dolls are used all the time there to represent spirits, and about the sense of humor that all Haitians seem to have to carry with them. Everything looked well-done and more meaningful in this new light. The history of Haiti and its people are the main focus of all of their art. This is a culture that deserves it. If American art only focused on the good American culture, there wouldn’t be much art, much less any good art, but Haiti is a different story. Spirituality is their way of life, and everything they do is for the spirits, especially their art-making.
The altar was the first piece explained to us. It is a huge table set up with cloths and bottles with babies in them, and crosses with babies heads on them, and snakes and candles and offerings made to the gods. At first glance, this looks like a very messy and demonic child’s top of their toy chest. But it has a heaping amount more of significance than a childs’ toy chest does. Everything on the altar means something. And the intricacies! People took TIME to set up something special in which they could pray to, and that’s fantastic. Haitians do a lot of hard work and get nothing in return, so I really started to admire this altar. Above the altar, and around the entire exhibit were the beaded prayer flags I mentioned before. These especially caught my attention as they were the most colorful and attractive art works in the exhibit. These took HOURS upon HOURS to make. The detail is incredible.
At first, the Haitians used sequins to sew on and make an image of a spirit or a scene that would grant them something, but then one woman revolutionized the way prayer flags were made and thought of ever more. Constante started making these flags with the smallest beads imaginable, and did it flawlessly. She started out sewing them each by hand, but eventually got popular and could afford to hire apprentices who also made it big with these flags. One can tell that much planning and thought about placement, color, and imagery goes into one flag. Also going into these flags are patience, time, money, and prayers. They are brilliant and showy and in your face and I can see why there is a high demand for them in galleries around the world.
I really loved the found sculpture art of the three spirits on the motorcycles, and the self-portraits by Eduoard Deval Carrie. They show that there is contemporary art coming from Haiti/Haitians that still has this sense of spirituality along with other contemporary issues. The self-portraits were of my interest because of their scale and how different they were compared to all of the other pieces in the show. They really didn’t have much to do with the spirits, but more about the artist himself and his struggles with leaving a country that he loved to actually make something of his life and make a name for himself in the world. Duval Carrie also used many media in his self-portraits which can be an inicator of a talented fine artist, and that he is.
This exhibit opened my eyes to the art of Haiti, where it came from and its plethora of meanings. The smallest details make the biggest impact, and that’s why I grew to love this exhibit and spread the word about it. Everything about it screams about how different their lives are, and in my opinion, it’s important to open our minds to every culture we have the availability to, especially in person like this exhibit has allowed me.
Annie Hobbs is a third-year photography major. Her plans are to get out of the United States as soon as she finishes undergrad and get her masters in Europe or Canada to become the finest of the fine art photographers.
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