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11 August 2021
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7 October 2021Secret pathway of blood
Haiti's bloody history inspires an artist to bring stories of past iniquities to a present-day audience
A new exhibition of evocative artwork – Haïti, le secret cheminement du sang – from artist Ernest Pignon-Ernest is due to open in Paris in September
Just over a kilometre from the Arc de Triomphe and situated at 38 avenue Matignon, a two-minute stroll from the fabled Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, is the gallery of Lelong & Co. This venue will play host to a new exhibition of the evocative artwork of the Nice-born Parisian, Ernest Pignon-Ernest.
Unanimously saluted by critics as an unequalled draughtsman and an essential artist, Pignon-Ernest was invited to Port-au-Prince, the capital city of Haiti in the Caribbean, in 2011. While there he was able to discover the city along with the incredible bustling life that reigns along with the tragic consequences of the 2010 earthquake that still lingers.
It was seeing the ruined cathedral and the vitality of creativity and the religious syncretism that runs through it all that made him want to find out more.
While in Port-au-Prince the artist met with Lyonel Trouillot, a novelist and poet in both French and Haitian Creole and discovered that his work inspired him to greater study of the Haitian reality and its poetry, the two of which he deems to be inseparable.
In turn this led Pignon-Ernest to the work and person of Jacques Stephen Alexis (1922-61), the Haitian communist novelist, and to learn about his disappearance and possible execution at the hands of François Duvalier (aka ‘Papa Doc’), the then-heir to Haiti’s bloody tradition.
The country of Haiti (the western half of the island of Hispaniola, shared with the Dominican Republic) is home to a crossroad of cultures, beliefs and legends, from the most magical to the crudest. Tyrannies seem to be ever-present in Haiti – they impose themselves in extreme violence and in their desire to terrorise their cruelty is ever more visible. Indeed, the bloodshed is on-going, with the latest example being the murder of the erstwhile president – Jovenel Moïse – on 7 July of this year.
Tyrannies seem to be ever-present in Haiti – they impose themselves in extreme violence and in their desire to terrorise their cruelty is ever more visible
In this historical context of unbridled cruelty, where torture and murder are proclaimed, declared and displayed, what does it mean that Duvalier denied ordering the execution of Alexis? Unless it implies that he, a singularly unaware individual, was somehow actually aware of the awfulness of his crime and realised that he could not – even after time had passed – face ‘the clamour made by a poet that we kill’ (these words were written by Nicaraguan Francisco Aragón about fellow poet Federico García Lorca). Because the poet in question – his thinking, his writing and his imagination – is the country itself.
Deceased and deprived of a tomb, the whereabouts of his body unknown, Pignon-Ernest wanted to use his collages to return the face of Alexis to the streets of Port-au-Prince
Deceased and deprived of a tomb, the whereabouts of his body unknown, Pignon-Ernest wanted to use his collages to return the face of Alexis to the streets of Port-au-Prince.
His portrait accompanied by symbols from his work, is now engraved on an image of a doorway, in centre-ville, placing his destiny in the line of that of Charlemagne Péralte (1886-1919), the Haitian Nationalist leader who opposed the United States’ occupation of Haiti in 1915.
Péralte was executed by the occupiers who then exhibited his body, bound to a door. Then they shared the photographs of this heinous act thousands of times (heir to this sinister bloody tradition, Duvalier demanded that school children attend executions).
Other collages have been sketched out while some are in production and these will be seen at the exhibition in Paris. When travel, pandemic and yet another earthquake allow, Pignon-Ernest will be returning to Haiti to reawaken Haitians to Alexis.
It is in this vein that the exhibition is named – it translates into English as ‘The Secret Pathway of Blood’ which is singularly apposite.
As a personal addendum, I was born and raised in Haiti during the bloody reign of Papa Doc Duvalier. This exhibition’s content, context and search for a wider truth mean a huge amount to me and, travel restrictions permitting, I will be travelling to Paris to view it. I can’t wait.
Haïti, le secret cheminement du sang is at Galerie Lelong & Co. at 38 avenue Matignon, 75008, Paris from Thursday 9 September 2021 until 23 October 2021.
Words: TG
