The university’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History is one of three museums in the past decade to showcase Duval-Carrie’s ongoing exploration of migration and Haitian Voodoo, a blend of Christian tenets and African religions.
“He knows profoundly the plight of his own people, but he also knows how that fits into American society,” Cosentino said.
Duval-Carrie first took up migration as a theme in 1989 for a Paris exhibition. Altar of the Nine Slaves shows nine green-headed men chained in Africa, crowded into a boat and then at work in sugar cane fields in Haiti.
The slaves’ Middle Passage never ends, as they mingle with the gods throughout Duval-Carrie’s subsequent work. The boats mostly drift, sometimes aided by the serpent god bridging the distance between the palm-lined shores of Haiti and menacing Coast Guard vessels guarding the glittering lights of Miami. Mystical “power points” bind land, sea and sky in webs of sparkling dots.
The boat gods’ few landfalls appear traumatic. They shipwreck on tiny reefs jutting out of the water, and when they do reach Miami, the city seems to blind them. Searchlights block the entrance of a lone migrant in Vigilante City, while the gods stand stunned under a Miami Beach causeway in The Landing.
Duval-Carrie calls his work reflective, not political, though Haitian migrants represent the effects of political and economic policies throughout the region.
“These are people, they’re real people. There should be a basic minimum of respect and understanding,” he said. “You cannot just treat them because they’re black or they’re poor any differently than your poor people here. And it’s a reflection on the US, how they behave.”
The dark sense of humor evident in his work bubbles up as Duval-Carrie considers what he could paint if the boats ceased coming. “Something lofty or something banal. I would like to paint flowers,” he said, chuckling.
He probably won’t have that opportunity soon. About 40 Haitian migrants were detained earlier this month after their boat came ashore in a storm in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos; 15 people died and dozens were missing after a sailboat packed with Haitians struck a reef near the same island in July. Eleven Haitians were detained as they landed at a South Florida beach in July. Earlier this month, the Coast Guard repatriated 164 Haitians found in a freighter in the Bahamas.
“The problem hasn’t come to an end yet,” said Peter Boswell, senior curator at the Miami Art Museum. “He feels the need to continue to address it and not let it be a period in his art. The situation in Haiti hasn’t really changed enough for him to take on a new subject.”
On the Net: www.edouard-duval-carrie.com
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