23450: (Hermantin)Sun-Sentinel-FIU exhibit focuses on Haitian sculpture (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

FIU exhibit focuses on Haitian sculpture



By Candice Russell
Special Correspondent

October 11, 2004

Raw, rhythmic and challenging, "Lespri Endepandan: Discovering Haitian
Sculpture" is the kind of exhibition that doesn't play it safe. Credit is
due curator Elizabeth Cerejido and Donald Cosentino, the UCLA professor who
wrote the informative wall texts and the accompanying catalog, for
assembling an exhibition that honors an area of Haitian art often seen as a
mere adjunct to the more recognized medium of painting.

Justified emphasis is put on the sculptors of metal, including pioneer
Georges Liautaud, who began his career after forging crosses for the dead in
the Croix-des-Bouquets cemetery. He and followers such as Murat Brierre are
represented by stylized visions of the crucifixion. Liautaud's supremely
simple Untitled (Possession), from the 1970s, deals with spiritual
transformation. This is the most breathtaking of all the treasures available
in the first gallery of the museum, which also includes wonderfully
expressive animal figures by other artists.

The main gallery is dominated by Barque Agoue, made of wood, metal and mixed
media, by Jean Camille Nasson. This gondolalike vessel for the voodoo god of
the sea is laden with embellished wood carvings akin to African fetish
objects including an eyeless angel with crosses on his wings, and Erzulie,
the goddess of love equated in voodoo to the Virgin Mary. A manic urgency
emanates from the untitled scary work of wood, metal and rubber by Jean
Herard Celeur, featuring skeletons in a state of arousal. They symbolize the
trickster Guede family of spirits, who govern the fate of the soul after
death.

Surpassing whimsy is found in the assemblages of Lionel St. Eloi, also known
as a fine painter of elaborate voodoo ceremonies. His angels and voodoo
figures are remarkable concoctions of aluminum, metal, glass and other
objects. Musician (c. 1990s) is a female angel with exaggeratedly large
hands playing an accordion. Zaka (1998), the voodoo god of agriculture,
exemplifies St. Eloi's concern for minute detail, from the straw bag slung
over his shoulder to his crisscross sandals with pretty bows at the ankles.
There's even a curl of wire suggesting smoke emanating from his pipe.

Another wizard of recycling is Pierrot Barra. An untitled work from 1993,
made from dolls, satin, plastic, sequins, beads, glass, pins, metallic
ribbon and lace, is typical of his capacity to find value in rearranged
discards. The eyeless dolls with dirty or painted faces are placed so as to
seem engrossed in conversation. Barra's work is as unsettling as Mario
Benjamin's installation Dark Room, with its cloth mannequins hung like
seaweed-draped corpses from the ceiling.

Curatorially speaking, there are a few oversights. Where is the sculpture of
wood master Nacius Joseph and the stately stone carving of Georges Laratte?
Despite a few strong examples by Michel Sinvil, short shrift is given to the
medium of papier-mache, especially the large fantastical masks of carnival.
Painted metal sculptures aren't in the exhibition at all.

Cosentino's conclusions are sometimes debatable. While the voodoo-inspired
crosses of Ti-Bute stray to the religion's dark side, it is insulting to
compare them with the American cult movie Night of the Living Dead, as is
done in a wall text. The statement can be read as an attempt to provide this
culturally freighted art with a reference point for South Florida museum
visitors, many of whom may never have seen Haitian art before.

Candice Russell is a freelance writer in Plantation.
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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