Myrlande Constant: Drapo
Opening: Wednesday, January 11, 6 – 8 PM
On View: January 12 – March 11, 2023
New York: Beginning January 11, 2023, Fort Gansevoort will present Drapo, its first solo exhibition with Haitian artist Myrlande Constant, who has attracted international attention for dazzling hand-beaded and sequin-embroidered textile works in which heritage techniques are used to mingle contemporary and traditional themes.
The evolution of Constant’s personal aesthetic and mastery of her medium will be evident in ten new pieces on view to the public for the first time. Constant's work was recently showcased in the Venice Biennale exhibition The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani (April 23— November 27, 2022). The artist’s upcoming survey exhibition, Myrlande Constant: The Work of Radiance, will open at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles on March 26, 2023 – the first U.S. museum exhibition devoted to a female Haitian artist.
Based in Port-Au-Prince, Myrlande Constant is known for sophisticated figurative compositions composed with beads and sequins on cloth. While drawing upon the vernacular of traditional Vodou flags (known as drapo Vodou), which often adorn temples and are used in ceremonial practices, her oeuvre is characterized by a distinctively sensual, painterly quality. Intricate details and sumptuous colors coalesce in elaborate narrative scenes. Many of Constant’s flags depict lwa spirits and illustrate folklore central to the Vodou religion. Expanding into a secular context, Constant’s art also incorporates imagery taken from Haitian history and civic life. Although commercial flag making is a craft traditionally dominated by men, Constant is the first female Haitian textile artist to gain international acclaim for her innovation in the longstanding drapo Vodou practice. In depicting her unique versions of the Haitian religion’s myths, she has harnessed a fresh and contemporary spiritual force that elevates her work above the realm of folk art and craft.
Measuring nearly ten feet in length and height, the monumental artwork Reincarnation Des Morts, 2022—one of the largest pieces Constant has made to date—portrays the family of Haitian Vodou spirits associated with death. At the center of the composition, the figure of Bawon Samdi, the guardian of cemeteries, appears wearing his typical suit and sunglasses. He links arms with his wife Grann Brijit, who confronts the viewer with a half-flesh-covered face. Together the couple holds court in the surrounding graveyard while the resurrected dead and the spirits commingle. Ominously hovering behind Bawon Samdi and Grann Brijit, a skeleton with wings assumes the role of lead drummer flanked by two percussionists in human form. The inflection of music into the scene adds to the work’s sensorial quality and dramatic tone. In Constant’s artistic practice—which she considers to be intrinsically connected to her spiritual life—the worlds of the dead and the living, the spiritual and terrestrial, are fluid. Rather than something to be feared, she views death as a natural part of the cycle of life. Although specific in its religious references, Constant’s masterpiece can be read as a collective homage to all the deceased across time and geography.
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