Edouard Duval-Carrié
Inside left & right: Les Jumeaux -Twins- Marassa (Diptych)
2006
Mixed media on paper in acrylic box - 79.5 x 52 inches
Inside center: La Maison Brulant (Burning House) 2006
Mixed media on paper in acrylic box - 79.5 x 52 inches
Edouard Duval-Carrie has a passionate love affair with his country Haiti,
although he is also critical. His work in “Uprooted” is an implicit
critique of Haitian history as though it were suspended in mythic timelessness
and entrenched in stereotypes. The artist deconstructs notions and realities
of retrograde provincialism and romantic bourgeois traditions. His paintings
combine African fables, classic mythology, Haitian and world history with
contemporary events. Haiti is a pan-African state. The slaves came with
sets of beliefs that combined into a religion loosely called voodoo. Voodoo
has been the soul of Haiti, the essence that permits Haitian to emancipate
themselves and is today as valid for the majority of Haitians, as it was
200 years ago. Voodoo has gone underground; it is a religion on the margin.
The artist’s work forces the viewer to consider this fact of life
in Haiti and also asks why Haiti has been forgotten by the great powers
of the world. In “Uprooted” the artist gives the Voodoo world
and its deities back to the Haitian people and maybe to each of us.