Repeating Islands

Elinor J. Brecher (Miami Herald) reports that “the Jan. 12 earthquake has given Haitian art new themes, as artists begin to confront the catastrophe on canvas—and on chunks of rubble.” What is being described as “rubble art” include depictions of “people trapped in wreckage, dead and alive; military helicopters, ambulances, hospital tents, toppling steeples, buildings cracking and teetering.” Here are excerpts with a link to the article below:

In one painting at Men Nou, a showcase for Haitian artisans, angels rise from the wreckage of the United Nations headquarters in Port-au-Prince. [. . .] Ruth Goldman, who runs the shop with her husband, American anthropologist Ira Lowenthal, is especially taken with the rubble art, a genre that arose from the wreckage and out of necessity. Goldman, who is Haitian, works with a group of artists from Jacmel, Haiti’s arts capital, which was decimated. “They were complaining that they didn’t have canvas, they didn’t have paper,” said Goldman, who has lived in New York and Miami. “When I saw them after the earthquake, they were very out of it. I told them, ‘You have to get this out of your head, and hopefully it will leave you.’” She gave them the only drawing materials she could supply: colored Sharpies. And some historical inspiration. “Did you ever hear of the Berlin Wall? You’ll use the same rubble that killed so many people.”

The first three rubble-art pieces Goldman received from the Jacmel group sold immediately. The following week, she sold 40. They’re fetching up to $150. She sent a Sharpie-on-concrete-chunk work by the artist Ambroise Anderson of Jacmel to the Arte Americas fine art fair.

“I was already inspired by the earthquake, but I hadn’t thought of using the rubble to paint on. . . . I saw it as a beautiful idea, really, because it gave me a way to share the sadness that I feel,” said Joseph Sevenson of Jacmel. [. . .] He sees quake art as “a way to sensitize everyone so that we don’t lose everything, particularly [the memory of] our historic buildings.”

For full article, see http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/26/1548857/haitian-artists-use-rubble-art.html\

Photo from http://www.independentmail.com/photos/galleries/2010/jan/14/haiti-48-hours-later/24726/