Haití: Muerte y fertilidad

The Republic of Haiti is for the first time at the 54th Venice Biennale, one of the most relevant international art event in the world.

The exhibition DEATH AND FERTILITY presents the works of three artists from Port-au-Prince, who are a part of Atis-Rezistans, the artistic collective from the Grand Rue neighbourhood. The group, started in the mid-nineties, is based in a popular neighbourhood in the Haitian capital. Death and Fertility focuses on Gede, the family of spirits, which, in the Vodou religion, embody both death and fertility.

The focus on Gede has been a curatorial choice which intends to highlight the artists' meditation on the extremes of life and the elements in their work which allude to death and sexuality, reflecting the complexity of Vodou.

La República de Haití por primera vez participa en la 54 ª Bienal de Venecia.La exposición MUERTE Y LA FERTILIDAD presenta las obras de tres artistas de Port-au-Prince, que son parte de Atis-Rezistans, el colectivo artístico del barrio Grand Rue. El grupo, que comenzó a mediados de los noventa, se basa en un barrio popular de la capital haitiana. La muerte y la fertilidad se centra en Gede, la familia de los espíritus, que, en la religión vudú, representan la muerte y la fertilidad.El enfoque en Gede ha sido una opción curatorial que tiene la intención de poner de relieve la meditación de los artistas en los extremos de la vida y los elementos en su trabajo, que aluden a la muerte y la sexualidad, lo que refleja la complejidad de vudú.

Of all Venice’s surreal juxtapositions, none beats the fragile Haitian pavilion, housed in shipping containers installed on the quayside directly underneath Roman Abramovich’s monster-yacht. Three artists from Port-au-Prince’s Atis-Rezistans collective, Jean Hérard Celeur, André Eugène and Jean Claude Saintilus, show raucous sculptural collages of the human form shaped from junk – engine manifolds, computer entrails, TV sets – dashed with lavishly coloured textile fragments and recalling fetish effigies. Ready-mades here are used from economic necessity, not Duchampian choice, to speak eloquently of transformation – wreckage into art, the everyday into the immortal – with a vigorous expressiveness standing out from the Biennale’s slick, well-rehearsed ironies

www.deathandfertility.org