Siddhartha Mitter (The New York Occasions) highlights the work of Haitian-born artist Myrlande Fixed, whose tapestries, “drawn from Haitian Vodou traditions, take textile artwork to new heights with exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles.” [Many thanks to Peter Jordens for providing additional information on Constant’s exhibitions. See below. Also see previous post Myrlande Constant: Drapo/.]
The scene was a vibrant pastorale, rendered in hundreds of shimmering sequins and beads that stuffed a nine-foot-wide canvas with a crimson tasseled border. Within the background had been emerald fields, bulbous bushes, a blue-and-white streaked sky. Up entrance had been clusters of small figures in dialog on the bottom, beside a bull grazing. And anchoring the middle of this bustling tapestry had been the numerous manifestations of Kouzen Zaka, the lwa, or Haitian Vodou spirit, of farming — or as an embroidered inscription learn on the prime of the piece, the “minister of Agriculture.”
There’s a lot exercise in Myrlande Fixed’s tapestries that it will probably really feel unfair to ask her to clarify every element. However not too long ago, in New York for the opening of an exhibition of her latest works at Fort Gansevoort gallery within the Meatpacking district, this Haitian artist, who for 3 many years has led formal, technical and narrative innovation within the custom of drapo, or Vodou banners, was gamely indulging queries.
“You possibly can see him as a farmer, together with his scythe and his satchel,” Fixed mentioned, indicating a illustration of Kouzen (that’s “cousin” in Krèyol, or Haitian Creole, the nation’s main spoken language). In a single place, he was depicted with a darkish complexion, white beard, broad-brimmed hat and a blue, crimson and white shirt, all made kinetic by cascading sequins and thrown into excessive aid by her traces of enormous pearl beads. Elsewhere Kouzen was displayed younger, enjoying his flute, dancing. He additionally took the type of Saint Isidore, his Roman Catholic counterpart in Vodou’s syncretic taxonomy. There have been iterations as nicely of Kouzin, his spouse and feminine counterpart. “My pricey, let me let you know,” Fixed mentioned. “Madame by no means walks with out monsieur.”
Fixed had arrived from Philadelphia, the place she was staying with mates, one in every of whom had taken his taxicab off obligation to drive her to New York. She spoke in Krèyol, with the Haitian actor Atibon Nazaire translating. She wore a crimson pantsuit and blue prime; somebody educated in Vodou may need famous that these had been acceptable for that day — a Tuesday — being among the many colours of Erzulie, the spirit of affection for whom Tuesdays are sacred.
Fixed, 54, is a rigorist whose each motion accords with Vodou information and cosmology. However she is equally a trailblazer who has taken the drapo custom — a picture of an icon or a symbolic drawing (vèvè) unfurled at the beginning of ceremonies — and blown it open right into a narrative artwork, at an ever bigger scale. Her works have the centrifugal storytelling of, say, a Bruegel portray.
Lengthy influential regionally, she has steadily expanded her worldwide renown from collectors with an curiosity in Haiti to institutional consecration. Three of her works appeared within the 2022 Venice Biennale. This March a profession survey, “Myrlande Fixed: The Work of Radiance,” will open on the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles.
The Fowler exhibition’s co-curators, Katherine Smith and Jerry Philogene, emphasised in a joint interview how Fixed introduced Vodou drapo out of the strictly ritual or ethnographic realm and turned it right into a dynamic and complex type of up to date artwork, whereas additionally affirming girls’s work in a sometimes male area. [. . .]
For Cecilia Alemani, the 2022 Venice Biennale’s curator, Fixed’s work completely meshed together with her exhibition’s concentrate on the porous relationship between human, pure and mystical realms. “I take a look at her works, and I see an exuberant and effervescent universe,” Alemani mentioned. “It’s a world that has no boundaries between what’s alive and what’s useless.”
Fixed grew up in Léogâne, a city west of Port-au-Prince. Vodou was a presence within the family, informally. Her father was a houngan, or priest, however he left the household early on and based a temple in a rural space, enjoying little direct function in her upbringing. Quite she got here to her artwork via textile craft — particularly tambour embroidery, through which material is stretched taut (like a drum) and labored with a hook, an ornate method perfected in Lunéville, France, within the nineteenth century.
In Haiti, a low-wage subcontracting hub for the garment trade, Fixed labored together with her mom, Jane Fixed, in a manufacturing unit producing elaborately beaded marriage ceremony clothes and different gadgets. As a teen, “rising up in my surroundings, you need to be taught to work,” Fixed mentioned. “I discovered tips on how to work at my mom’s aspect.” However she rankled on the low pay and poor situations, and someday she confronted her employer, who promptly dismissed her.
She started to color, with out a lot success or satisfaction. However when she tried her hand at drapo, which historically concerned solely sequins, she discovered that tambour and beadwork opened new prospects in contour, depth and element.
Each bit begins with a line drawing that she formulates, throughout a meditative course of, on the again of the material material, which is then stretched throughout a body and labored upside-down. She reaches beneath the material and stitches the sequins and tassels, following the drawing. She will be able to’t see them, she will be able to solely really feel them, and witnesses the progress of the work solely when she turns it over. [. . .]
[Photo above by Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times: Myrlande Constant at Fort Gansevoort gallery in Manhattan in front of one her intricate tapestries. “Everything must be placed very particularly to reflect the vision,” she said. Second photo by Olivia DiVecchia: Constant’s “Kouzen Zaka Minis Agrikilti,” 2022.]
For full article and pictures, see https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/arts/design/myrlande-constant-haiti-vodou.html
“Drapo”
Myrlande Fixed
January 11 – March 11, 2023
Fort Gansevoort, 5 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10014
https://www.fortgansevoort.com/exhibitions/myrlande-constant
“Myrlande Fixed: The Work of Radiance”
Curated by Katherine Smith and Jerry Philogene
March 26 – July 16, 2023
Fowler Museum, 308 Charles E Younger Dr N, Los Angeles, CA 90024
https://fowler.ucla.edu/exhibitions/myrlande-constant
https://fowler.ucla.edu/product/myrlande-constant-work-radiance