29664: Benson: TIGA Passes (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From:  LeGrace Benson   legrace@twcny.rr.com <mailto:legrace@twcny.rr.com>

Tiga,  artist and educator, passed on 14 December. He  leaves an enormous
legacy to Haiti. A few weeks ago Europeans and Africans attending  a
conference  on  Memories of Slavery in Contemporary Images, saw  photographs
of his sculpture, Paradox.  with the artist standing behind it, looking
through  iron bars that everyone immediately recognized as the famous
outline of the  slave ship with its  unfortunate cargo. Requested to stand
beside the work,, Tiga preferred to be seen through its powerful reminder of
what Haitians had overcome.  The people in the room got his message.
He created many messages that will continue to circulate like some universal
teledjol, always.

An  homage to Tiga made in October of 2002  at the annual meeting of the
Haitian Studies Association  bears repeating.
Honor to Jean-Claude "Tiga" Garoute
Presented at the Fourteenth Annual Conference
Haitian Studies Association
(Asosyasyon Etid Ayisyen
Association des Études Haïtiennes)

Port-au-Prince, Haïti

19 October 2002

Sen Soley, Sen Lalin, Sen Zetwal-yo, Sen Pyebwa, Sen Dlo, Sen Lanmè, Sen
Zanzet, ak tout Gran Moun  ak tout Ti Moun, vin isit ak nou kounyea.

May the holy spirits of sun and moon and stars, the trees, the waters, the
sea, our ancestors, the holy spirit inhabiting all men and women and their
children come here with us now.
For we give praise to the inspired person, Jean-Claude Garoute  *Tiga* and
to his work.

He has done many kinds of spirited works. He and his colleagues Patrick
Vilaire and Fredo Casimir founded the Poto-Mitan center (1968) where new
ways of thinking about and making art could find support. Note the name,
Poto-Mitan, the pole that conducts the spirit into the community. In 1972,
he would work with Maud Robart, Louisianne Saint-Fleurant, Saint-Jean
Saint-Juste and Richard Antilhomme in the first burgeonings of what would
become the Saint Soliel project in the village of Soissons-la-Montagne where
he was building a home. Soon the world would know of Saint Soliel. The
poetic villagers would travel to Nancy, France to give a presentation that
was painting, sculpture and theater arising out of the lived experience of
the people of Soissons-la-Montagne.  Tiga's part had been to provide the
materials, the means and encouragement. The motifs were direct expressions
out of the heart of people living and working and making art together.  The
presentation was a huge international success, especially recognized by
André Malraux and quickly recognized in Haiti as well.   The distinctive
works still arising from this energy after a quarter of a century attest to
an enduring consciousness, deeply rooted and authentic. Many have written
about  the Saint Soliel project. Interviewing those who observed the events
from close up, of speaking with family members and Tiga himself, and in
seeing work generated out of that community sensibility, I discover that the
story of the remarkable flourishing in that corner of the world continues.
One author in 1980 regretted its passing away, and yet the paintings of
Stevinson Magloire were then and afterwards cited for their powerful and
even dangerous messages. One hears from the original artists of continuing
friendships and collaborations. The special sensibility, distinctively
Haitian, clearly Kreyol, arises out of understandings of the natural world,
of its joys and dangers, of good and evil in nature and in the human heart.
Tiga did not make or control the artistic production there. He brought in
materials, gave a bit of instruction about ways they could be used and
constantly encouraged the free exercise of intuition and discovery.

The international world of art also knows Tiga for his own paintings and
sculptures. His works are vigorous and imaginative, making use of a variety
of traditional and found materials. They turn viewers' expectations upside
down to redirect ordinary ways of thinking and seeing into something richer
and more profound.

Many other people know Tiga for being a teacher who draws out the creative
energies present in his students. They know him for being a teacher of
teachers who will make a place and a way for their own pupils to unlock the
stored up creation. Tiga reveals that the spirit dwells within each one of
us.

Most of all and most fundamentally, he gives encouragement to our indwelling
ideas and images. His function is what the Greeks called maiuitic, the
educator who elicits the latent ideas, encourages, animates and allows the
free development out of the real sensibilities already present.  This was
his way in Soissons-la-Montagne and this has been his way with all those he
has served so deeply as teacher.

I observed this in action when I visited his school in Port-au-Prince.
Arriving in Haiti in 1981 to do an article for Art International, one of the
first names I heard was Tiga, and one of the first stories told was about
Saint Soliel. A decade later, I was finally able to make an appointment with
this artist-teacher of whom I had heard so much.  At last I could see for
myself.  It was not an interview. Looking around the rooms I could see
already the place itself was vibrant, and the person before me was intensely
alert * a sort of activated nodal point upon which energetic rays converged
and then reverberated back into the space around him. For two or three hours
I knew I should be a student, not an art historian.  Some school teachers
arrived for a studio session. For the next little while I observed their
engagement in a dual process of untying their own personal creativity and of
learning how they could enable their students to do so as well.  It was
exciting to see the work progress and to watch and listen while Tiga went
from one student to the next, always eliciting reactions, always supporting
the adventure into new territory: looking, seeing, feeling, responding and
making something out of the experience.

I left with the sheaf of papers outlining his theories he graciously gave
me. They were unlike any theories I had encountered in my own training in
Bauhaus methodology, unlike anything I had seen in public schools or
colleges in the United States.  There is nothing with which to compare .
these diagrams and vocabularies. There are concepts that are seldom if ever
evoked in the art teaching studios in the Americas and Europe.  I found
myself recalling the writings of André Breton, who asserted the need for us
in the West to rediscover our deeper spiritual roots; to reestablish our
connections with the sun and the earth, rocks and water, the darkness and
the love that lives in the heart. I understood how he could say that
"…poetry should be done by all, not just by one."

Tiga is the most stalwart contributor I know of to the efforts in progress
to transform education from rote learning of factoids into notions and
actions of discovery and creation.

As an artist in his own right, his many works in collections all over the
world give witness to the strength and subtlety of his vision. His
imagination is unbounded because his spirit is without borders.  Recently I
showed a projected image of one of his sculptures, Paradox…a work in welded
iron. A rectangle formed of horizontal iron bars welded to vertical rods
forms a sort of grid, with an oval opening in the center. Suspended down
that opening is a heavy chain. The viewers were a group of Caribbean
historians. As soon as the image was on the screen, there was a collective
gasp.  They knew. The paradox was the continued presence of bonds and chains
in a nation that freed itself 200 years ago.  The seemingly abstract, modern
shape of that sculpture repeated the famous map of the slave-ship deck, the
bodies of African captives horizontal like a grid, each of them chained into
place.

In his work as an artist, his work as an educator, his work as a fellow
traveler with the rest of us, he is here to bring in the strongest spirits
to enable us to break our chains.

It is the great joy and privilege of the Haitian Studies Association to
honor this work and the person who so energetically makes it happen.