In Gerard Valcin’s oil-based painting, “Saut-D’eau,” Haitian residents are adorned in colorful attire as they gather around the Saut-D’eau in Haiti. The waterfall is considered a spiritual place in Haiti where people go to bathe to renew themselves.
The painting is one of 16 reproductions of artwork by Haitian artists that will be displayed outside the Little Haiti Cultural Center beginning Friday in an outdoor exhibit titled Haiti in the Heartland. The images will be reproduced on a PVC material that will withstand the Miami weather and will be on display for the next two years at the center’s corridor between its gallery and stage.
The works that were replicated were pulled from a collection of 2,000 Haitian artworks housed at Waterloo Center for the Arts in Waterloo, Iowa, home to the largest collection of Haitian art in the United States. The center amassed the collection after receiving a donation from Dr. and Mrs. F. Harold Reuling in 1977 and its collection of Haitian art has grown over the past five decades.
Fayola Nicaisse, chairwoman of the Miami-based Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance, hopes people learn more about Haiti and what it has to offer through art. “People have such a stigma about Haiti. You know, it’s either voodoo or poverty, and we’re such a rich culture,” she said. “We have so much that has yet to be discovered. There’s so many layers to us, layers to our people. We come in all colors, shapes, sizes, and we have so many different styles and ways of expressing ourselves. I have yet to meet a Haitian person that doesn’t have a natural act for art. It’s in our blood.”
The replicas will be unveiled at the Little Haiti Cultural Center at 7 p.m. Friday and will feature a celebration of Haitian art and music, including a performances by King Waggy Tee of 99 Jamz, DJ Mixx of Reggaeboyz Sound, and DJ Mack.
The exhibit is two years in the making and features prominent Haitian artists such as Paul Lalibert and Rigaud Benoit, said Nicaisse, who got the idea for the exhibit after assistant professor Petrouchka Moïse of Grinnell College in Iowa visited the Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance to discuss her project, The Haitian Arts Digital Crossroads project, which aims to provide access to a digital archive of Haitian art to the public.
Curated by Nicaisse, Moïse and executive director of the Waterloo Center for the Arts, Chawne Paige, the exhibit is also in partnership with the Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance, Little Haiti Cultural Center, Grinnell College, and the Haitian Art Digital Crossroads project.
Nicaisse said displaying the reproductions of works of Haitian artists the Little Haiti Cultural Center was important because Haitian art is not really “available on a large platform where people can have daily access” to it.
“I feel like Haitian art is underrated, and I want people to have access to it to see how great it is,” Nicaisse told the Miami Herald. The pieces chosen are not meant to be interconnected, but were chosen to show the diversity of Haitian art, Nicaisse said. “They really show a broader view of Haitian art.”
The exhibit will also feature an untitled piece by Paul Lalibert that shows a young Black girl with her hair braided into three plaits and holding a small green bird. For Nicaisse, the painting is reminiscent of girlhood and growing up in Haiti, describing it as a representation of innocence.
“Every little girl in Haiti is dressed in a little pretty dress, and her hair is put in braids by her mom, and we walk like this well into our preteens,” she said, adding she recalled being teased for wearing her hair like that to school when she moved to the U.S. when she was 12.
Moïse echoed those sentiments: “It was very different. I had to beg my mother not to send me to school with ribbons in my hair when I got to high school,” she said, adding young girls wearing their hair in braids was a part of the protocol in Haiti
Nicaissee’s personal favorite is “Peacock in Tree” by Rigaud Benoit, who is considered one of the Haitian masters. “It’s such a statement piece,” she said, adding that in some cultures the peacock can symbolize luck and wealth. Moïse, said peacocks are abundant in Haiti.
For Moïse, Benoit’s work is a glimpse into Haitian life that her parents’ knew before coming to the United States in 1967. “I love work because it gives me a Polaroid into the Haitian moment and into Haitian joy,” she said. “His use of colors was always very animated, especially for me as a person who was born in the diaspora and my life was really based around the stories that my parents told about their youth. When I was able to start to study Benoit, I was able to see that world that my parents talked about.”
Nicaissee wants the Waterloo pieces to be seen in other places, such as Boston and Washington, D.C., so the rest of country can appreciate Haitian culture and ultimately change the national conversation that has taken over since the false statements about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets began to dominate headlines.
“I think one way to counteract that is by educating the masses on who we are, because they don’t really know who we are,” she said.
“So if someone else controls the narrative of who you are, they can skew whatever story, whatever narrative they want,” she continued. “But if you get a hold of that narrative yourself, and you educate people on who you are and what you are about, you control the narrative in this generation and the next generation. I think that’s what we need to do as Haitians.”
IF YOU GO:
WHAT: Unveiling for “Haiti in the Heartland” public art installation and “Haiti in the Heartland Music Fest”
WHEN: Friday, Nov. 1, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
WHERE: Little Haiti Cultural Center, 212-260 NE 59th Terrace, Miami, Florida 33137
COST: Free
