What an honor to be featured on VOA Kreyòl for NAN SAN! Special thanks to Obed Lamy for conducting our interviews, capturing the footage, and translating me and my sister’s responses from English to Kreyòl.

NAN SAN is On view until March 31, 2024. Catch the show at:

The Haitian American Museum of Chicago

4410 N. Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60640

Hours:

Monday CLOSED

Tuesday CLOSED

Wednesday - Saturday, 12PM - 6PM

Sunday, 12PM - 4PM

I’m back in New York and proud to share I’m in another show this month. Last Thursday, BYENVINI (Welcome) opened at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI).

This exhibition is the fruit of a seed planted by curator Yvena Despagne four years ago. Since then, she has worked tirelessly on behalf of myself and other Haitian contemporary artists to show our work, amplify our stories, and honor Ayiti with the respect it deserves. Thanks to Yvena, four years ago I got to show for the first time in an all-Haitian show with six artists I have deep respect for. Today I have the pleasure to present alongside my Haitian fanmi (family) once again, now eleven, and with works that have never been shown together in one space. Thanks to the CCCADI firehouse, a North Star institution, we’ve reconstructed “home” within its walls.

I hope you can visit and see the show at some point during the year-long programming CCCADI has dedicated to Haiti, centering the theme Lakay se Lakay: Home is Home.

BYENVENI welcomes you to explore the captivating journey of contemporary Haitian art and celebrate Haiti's enduring legacy, a beacon of strength and deep culture.

CCCADI

120 E 125th Street

New York, NY 10035

Hours:

Tuesdays 3pm - 7pm

Wednesdays 11am - 2pm

Thursdays 3pm -7pm

Every 3rd Saturday 12pm - 4pm

Guided student tours are available by appointment on Thursdays 10am - 2pm

Visit CCCADI.ORG/BYENVENI

Happy New Year. The end of 2023 was a whirlwind and 2024 is off to a crazy start for me. So far, the year has ushered in a few firsts…

• i’m in a show with family
• in the city of my birth
• at a Haitian American Museum

Thanks to the generosity of The Haitian American Museum of Chicago (HAMOC), a pillar institution in Chicago’s Haitian community, this has been a special homecoming for me.

I’ve learned so much about myself in the process of putting this show together. Working with family ain’t no crystal stair. Yet, Nan San will probably be among the most meaningful exhibitions I’ll ever do. I love my father and my sister more than any words I can share here. They are forever, nan san mwen (in my blood).

Special thanks to HAMOC’s amazing staff and to Jon Duong for graciously helping out in the 11th hour.

On view until March 31, go see our show if you’re in the Chicagoland area.

IN THE WAKE OF CRISTÓBAL COLOMBO

In the Wake of Cristóbal Colombo, 2017 , Paper, spray paint, glitter and sequins on wood, 52 x 32.5 inches

i've reworked aspects of this so many times...i'm still not sure it's "finished."

if i could say anything about this piece, unresolved or not, it's a talk back to the inundation of negative press coverage on Haiti and Haitians in the West. coverage that promotes disaster capitalism, perpetuates retraumatization, and recycles old narratives of the historical while barely addressing actual history.

i found news clippings from the past two decades, i.e. coverage on everything from the 2010 earthquake, hurricanes Matthew, Harvey, Irma, and now Maria, the cholera outbreak brought on by UN peacekeepers, "boat people" and mass exodus, the blame placed on Haiti for HIV's "entrance" into the U.S., and more and doused them with coffee and salt. traditionally, coffee and salt is given to a person in shock or when one has to deliver bad news (that may cause shock). "The Paradise of God" is written across the bottom in sequins and engulfed by glitter. it's a reference to an entry in Christopher Columbus' nautical journal recounting his fleet's arrival to the island and his first impression(s). intent on enslaving the indigenous Taino - Arawak peoples and mining the island's gold, Haiti was the first island Columbus attempted to colonize in the West. eventually succeeding, Haiti would go from paradise to pearl to pariah under European rule and U.S. occupation. 

through this work and my ongoing project, The 10th Department, i am generating an insurgent archive that disrupts conventional archives, which perform violence through misinformation and disinformation. my own form of coffee and salt. 

**rather than use the Anglicized version of the Latin Christophorus Columbus aka Christoper Columbus, i've combined Cristóbal (Spanish for Christopher) and  Colombo (Italian for Columbus). 

EVERY DAY, I EMPLOY THE DIALECT OF UNTAMED HURRICANES. I speak the mad- ness of opposing winds.

Every evening, I use the patois of furious rains. I speak the rage of over- flowing waters.

Every night, I speak to the islands of the Caribbean in the language of hysterical storms. I speak the madness of the sea in heat.

Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms. Unfolding of life in a spiral.

In its essence, life is tension. Toward something. Toward someone. Toward oneself. Toward the point of maturation where the ancient and the new unravel. Death and birth. And every being finds itself – in part – in pursuit of its double. A pursuit that might even seem to bear the intensity of need, of desire, of infinite quest.

Dogs pass by (I’ve always been obsessed with stray dogs). They yap at the silhouette of the woman I’ve been chasing. At the image of the man I’ve been seeking out. At my double. At the murmurings of fleeting voices. For so many years now. It feels like thirty centuries.

The woman has left. Without fanfare. Left my heart out of tune. The man never held out his hand to me. My double is always just a step ahead of me. And the unhinged throats of nocturnal dogs let loose terrifying howls, making the sound of a broken accordion.

It is then that I become a tempest of words, bursting open the hypocrisy of clouds and the deceitfulness of silence. Rivers. Storms. Flashes of light- ning. Mountains. Trees. Lights. Rains. Untamed oceans. Take me away in the frenzied marrow of your joints. Take me away! It would take just a hint of clarity for me to be born with nine lives. For me to accept life. Tension. The inexorable law of maturation. Osmosis and symbiosis. Take me away! It would take just the sound of a footstep, a glance, a tender voice, for me to live happily in the hope that Man is capable of awakening. Take me away! For it would take so little for me to speak of the sap that circulates in the marrow of cosmic joints.

Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms. I speak the unfolding of life in a spiral.

+Franketienne

 

Translated from French by Kaiama L. Glover.

The Ghetto Tarot Project

The Ghetto Tarot is a photographic interpretation of the traditional tarot deck in the ghetto. The scenes are inspired by the Rider Waite Tarot deck (originally designed in 1909 by artist Pamela Colman Smith) and are replicated together with award-winning documentary photographer Alice Smeets and a group of Haitian artists called Atis Rezistans (Resistant Artists) in the Haitian slums using only material found or created locally. On several cards the artist's art was used, that includes symbolism from the Vodou religion to embody the important meaning of the cards original symbols.

The name of the Ghetto Tarot is inspired by the "Ghetto Biennale", which is an invitation by Atis Rezistans to visiting Western and non-Western artists to come to Haiti and create art in collaboration with them to produce a show at the end. Atis Rezistans use trash to create art with their own visions that are a reflection of the beauty they see hidden within the waste. 

Labadee, Haiti. 2015.

Cap-Haïtien, Haiti. 2015.