HAITIANA/MODULES
“Beginning from the assumption that Caribbean visual artists share a language of iconic symbols and shapes, much in the same way one would find in the works of European masters… As she put this visual alphabet of drawings together, she realized that what she was seeing and seeking was the artist’s essential gesture, not a characteristic image so much as the artist’s distinctive hand motion, signature conceptual figure, unique style of drawing, defining visual statement… In each instance, and in the movement from one figure to the next, Charlier is interested less in the individual icon itself than in the deconstruction of such an icon into its most essential and constituent parts — the segments of a line, the smudges of a color, the wavy squiggle of a ruffle or horse’s neck.
Charlier breaks each Grand Master’s figure back down into the individual movements of the artist as he is drawing his work. On a constant search for the most cut-down, stripped down, elemental, mark or line, Charlier finds her answer to the question what is the essence of a Caribbean visual language, not in the final product, but in the acts or gestures that make up the artistic process itself?”
Charlier breaks each Grand Master’s figure back down into the individual movements of the artist as he is drawing his work. On a constant search for the most cut-down, stripped down, elemental, mark or line, Charlier finds her answer to the question what is the essence of a Caribbean visual language, not in the final product, but in the acts or gestures that make up the artistic process itself?”
Michelle Stephens
Haitiana
Modules
THEZAIN/SYNTHESIS
Thezain, bon zanmi mwen, zin…
Thezin, bon zanmi mwen, zin
Thezin nan dlo…
A tale told in a late afternoon, can be Haiti
Can be Elmhurst, Queens,
Corona, East New York, Brooklyn,
Miami or Boston…
A tale told in a yard- or an apartment
A girl, a fish,
Love-
Brother /treason
Daddy kills the fish
Girl dies of sorrow
They are reunited it the underworld.
Thezin, bon zanmi mwen, zin
Thezin nan dlo…
A tale told in a late afternoon, can be Haiti
Can be Elmhurst, Queens,
Corona, East New York, Brooklyn,
Miami or Boston…
A tale told in a yard- or an apartment
A girl, a fish,
Love-
Brother /treason
Daddy kills the fish
Girl dies of sorrow
They are reunited it the underworld.
Thezain Series
Synthesis