A year ago the earth adjusted itself and in a fearful momentary growl reduced as many as 300,000 Haitians into unceremoniously buried flesh. Countless others would bear the trauma of this unspeakable horror in the disfigurement of their bodies and, both within and outside of Haiti, in the shock registered in their memory. If before this tragedy most Haitians had little difficulty in apprehending “les invisibles” and, in their own way, the various forces in their universe, their post-earthquake consciousness must render their external world more than just merely visible. For the mind, as a meaning-making entity, is forever attempting to refashion the various levels of reality that come within its purview.
The series of prints produced for AQ/ART QUAKE, a fundraiser for Haitian artists and artisans directly impacted by the quake, suggests that, thematically, much of the world has been Haitianized, touched as it had already been by, among other memories, that of 1492 Hispaniola, the 1791 anti-slavery revolution, and on and on with the political and socio-cultural struggle. Haiti’s copious offerings, to which its people themselves would like to add their own codas but must also pass on to others, add up to much more than a historical bequest. This is evident at least in the ten stylistically varied prints that ten mostly New York-based artists, who happen to be of Haitian, Cuban, Dominican, Nevisian and Mexican backgrounds, have contributed to the fund-raising effort. It would seem that the trials of the Haitian nation, and especially its relentless strides toward a liberation consciousness vis-à-vis both objective and subjective matters, is prefigured in various degrees in the selfless and empathetic contributions of these artists.
This is all the more significant in that even though the artists were not asked to address a particular theme, six of them, Didier William, Vladimir Cybil Charlier, Marlie Decopain, Kathy Mooses, Aurora De Armendi, and Terry Boddie have contributed works wherein, thematically, a fathoming of symbolic, reshuffled reality is unfolding. Klode Garoute, Rejin Leys and Scherezade Garcia in different ways structure this reality in dualistic terms and Juana Valdes, as if “without faith and words,” objectifies the locus of its identity within the self.
All in all, this serious, historically important collection of prints—contextually a rarity, indeed—intimates that the struggle and suffering of the Haitian nation is not just surmountable but pregnant with philosophical relevance and possibilities.
Andre Juste December 2010
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