16040: Sun-Sentine Haitian artist Edouard Duval-Carrie exhumes memories of his homeland (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Haitian artist Edouard Duval-Carrie exhumes memories of his homeland

By Matt Schudel
Arts Writer
Posted June 22 2003


Edouard Duval-Carrié left his native Haiti more than 25 years ago, but Haiti
has never left him. Now settled in Miami, Duval-Carrié has studied and lived
all over the world, yet his troubled homeland in the Caribbean continues to
be the inspiration for his art.

He doesn't record the everyday events of Haiti in a documentary sense, and
his work is nothing like the simple, brightly colored scenes of peasant life
that have become numbingly familiar in recent years. Rather, Duval-Carrié
searches his own memory and imagination to create a private cosmography
derived from the Haitian experience.

The many forms of his vision can be seen in "Edouard Duval-Carrié: Endless
Passage," through Sept. 7 at the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami.
Organized by the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, this mid-career examination
of Duval-Carrié's achievement is the most extensive showing of his art so
far in South Florida.

Despite its variety -- there are paintings, sculptures, lacquered wooden
tiles, modern-day altarpieces and reliquaries -- no one would ever mistake
Duval-Carrié's art for that of anyone else. There is nothing detached or
ironic about it. His aim is to preserve the soul of Haiti, no matter how
tortured it may be. You could call it a fixation or obsession, or you could
call it a need to express the longings, sorrows and hopes of his poor,
blood-stained island nation.

One of the most impressive works in "Endless Passage" is a triptych in the
form of a classic altarpiece. The central panel of Trois Feuilles (Three
Leaves) shows a trio of figures from Duval-Carrié's personal pantheon. They
rise one above the other, in shades of blue, red and tan, sprouting leaves
in place of hair. Niches cut out of the surface of the altarpiece reveal
tropical scenes, masks, grimacing faces and images of hearts. Gold-painted
palm trees are carved into the side panels, and pointed objects (bullets,
perhaps?) pierce the surface.

The precise meanings may not always be clear, but there's no mistaking the
general drift: Duval-Carrié has merged the pagan beliefs of Haitian voodoo
(or vodou or vaudou, as it's sometimes spelled) with the staid traditions of
Western art. As if to say that one system of faith isn't superior to
another, he has made a series of 16 bronze staffs with voodoo symbols that
resemble the golden crosiers of the Catholic church. In a series of eight
bronze sculptures, he has given the gods of voodoo as much stature as saints
on stained glass windows.

A monumental series of four paintings that depict the indelible curse of
slavery, The Migration of the Spirits, invokes imagery that is somewhere
between the Bible and The Wizard of Oz. An elegant series of 12 lacquered
floor panels from 2002, The True Story of the Water Spirits, is really a
memorial to the souls lost in the Middle Passage.

Like Haiti itself, Duval-Carrié's art is a colorful, ever-evolving blend of
European, African and Caribbean influences. He creates his own symbolic
universe, in which boats can be the instruments of either freedom or doom.
Again and again, he shows human figures -- sometimes with crosses or animal
heads in place of their faces -- sailing toward an uncertain destiny. Death,
in the form of disguised skeletons, is a constant companion.

Occasionally, Duval-Carrié lifts the symbolic veil and makes his meaning
overt. His Incident in a Garden (1993), in which seven military figures with
piglike faces stand over the decapitated heads of dissidents, is plainly an
indictment of the brutal Tontons Macoute militia that terrorized the nation.
Mardi Gras at Fort Dimanche (1992) refers to a notorious prison where
Duval-Carrié's brother was held in the 1980s as a subversive. In this
scathingly satirical painting, Haiti's onetime dictator, Jean-Claude "Baby
Doc" Duvalier, is dressed as a gun-toting bride, surrounded by accomplices
-- fashionably dressed women, a priest, a military officer, and a mysterious
figure in a suit -- all wearing dark glasses.

Duval-Carrié is a powerful artist with an original vision, yet he may not be
for everyone. If it's elegance, restraint, and sure-handed skill with a
paintbrush that you want, then you're looking in the wrong place. He's an
artist who plays endless variations on the same themes -- though it should
be noted some of his recent works, incorporating flowers, leaves and fruits
with painting, seem to have little to do with Haitian politics or history.

An artist should be appreciated for what he is, rather than for what he is
not. And what you need to remember about Edouard Duval-Carrié is that, no
matter how long he has been away from his homeland, he carries the wounded
soul of Haiti within his heart, and within his art.

Matt Schudel can be reached at mschudel@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4689.

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