<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername"></b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:leahgordon@aol.com">leahgordon@aol.com</a>></span><br>Date: 20 February 2010 09:00<br>
Subject: Haiti in London: Tonight, Saturday 20, 7:30 – 11pm please forward<br>To: <a href="mailto:jcussans@gmail.com">jcussans@gmail.com</a>, <a href="mailto:lisacradduck@hotmail.com">lisacradduck@hotmail.com</a>, <a href="mailto:jesse@bravenewwhat.org">jesse@bravenewwhat.org</a>, <a href="mailto:fionawhitty@gmail.com">fionawhitty@gmail.com</a>, <a href="mailto:annemcconnell@blueyonder.co.uk">annemcconnell@blueyonder.co.uk</a>, <a href="mailto:sion@calverts.coop">sion@calverts.coop</a>, <a href="mailto:roger@dircon.co.uk">roger@dircon.co.uk</a>, <a href="mailto:tracey@foundry.tv">tracey@foundry.tv</a>, <a href="mailto:jonathan@foundry.tv">jonathan@foundry.tv</a><br>
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Hello everybody<br>
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We would like to invite you to the following event:<br>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ghetto Biennale</span>
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<div>Tonight, 7:30 – 11pm<br>
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The show, which opened last December at the same time than the Ghetto Biennale in Haiti, has been extended until the 28th February. The Island is delighted to show the last group of sculptures by Grand Rue sculptors Eugène, Celeur and Guyodo living and working in Port Au Prince.<br>
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The artist André Eugène will join us this evening, so the event will be an exciting opportunity to talk about his work.<br>
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Please find the details below and feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be interested. Thank you.<br>
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We hope to see you then.<br>
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The Island </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: 1pt;" lang="IT"> ---</span></div>
<h6><span style="font-size: 9pt; letter-spacing: 2.1pt;" lang="IT"> </span></h6>
<h5><span style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;" lang="IT"><font color="#990000">GHETTO BIENNALE</font><font color="#990000"></font></span></h5>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.3pt;" lang="IT"><i><font color="#990000">Radical
Relations (part III)</font><font color="#990000"></font></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: 0.8pt;" lang="IT"><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: 0.8pt;" lang="IT"><font color="#990000">28/11/09 –
28/02/10</font></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: 0.3pt;" lang="IT"><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: 0.3pt;"><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: 0.3pt;"><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b><i><font color="#990000">“What happens when first
world art rubs up against third world art? Does it bleed?”</font><font color="#990000"></font></i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: center;" align="center"><b><i><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><font color="#990000">The Island is
delighted to be the off-site partner of the first Ghetto Biennale of Haiti,
using its venue to show recent works by Haitian artists André Eugène, Celeur
Jean Hérard, Guyodo Klere and Claude Sentilus. </font><font color="#990000"></font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><font color="#990000">‘</font><i><font color="#990000">This is the
newest art community to have emerged in the last ten years in a downtown slum
neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The ‘Grand Rue Sculptors’ have produced
art that reflects a heightened, Gibsonesque, Lo-Sci-Fi, dystopian view of their
society, culture and religion, and have dragged Haitian art into the 21st
century. Jean Herard Celeur, Andre Eugene and Guyodo are at the core of the
movement, which contains seven or eight other younger artists, all producing
powerful sculptural works. Their work has opened entirely new vistas into
the creative possibilities of the Vodou-inspired arts of Haiti. Their muscular
sculptural collages of engine manifolds, computer entrails, TV sets, medical
debris, skulls and discarded lumber transforms the detritus of a failing
economy into deranged, post-apocalyptic totems’.</font></i><font color="#990000"> </font><span lang="IT"><font color="#990000">(Leah Gordon)</font></span><font color="#990000"></font></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><font color="#990000">Among the many
existing curatorial models of art biennials all over the world, The Island project of presenting simultaneously the ‘Ghetto Biennale’ in London
is directly related to the issues that give rise to the Biennale of Haiti
itself, such as for Haitian artists to overcome the dual isolation of an island
and of a ghetto. </font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><i><font color="#990000">Forging a
successful arts career is difficult for a downtown Haitian. Refused US entry
visas, the Grand Rue sculptors were excluded from a private view of their work
in a major museum in Miami. A lack of government support makes them
economically excluded from all major biennales. The artists have responded by
hosting the 'Ghetto Biennale', the first arts festival located in a shantytown
in the developing world. The event will explore what happens when artists from
radically different backgrounds come together. When first world art objectives
encounter third world artistic reality, and when Western artists try to make
art in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Haitian artist, Andre
Eugene says, 'the Ghetto Biennale represents positive change in my area and
gives us the chance to show another face of life in the ghettos of
Port-au-Prince. I think we have much to offer and much to learn.</font><font color="#990000"></font></i></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><i><font color="#990000">'The artists
use all the detritus of a post-industrial global economy which uses Haiti as a
dumping ground. They return the compliment, creating astounding bricolages and
assemblages which express both the despair and the seemingly endless
creativity of Haiti and Vodou. I have visited their ateliers on Haiti’s Grand
Rue on several occasions over the last four years. I have had a chance to see
their sculptures as they were being wrought from their desperate materials in a
scrap yard on this wreck of a street, in this wreck of a city, in this wreck of
a country. Saying all that, I would also have to add that, like Haiti, their
sculptures seem to express the boundless creative energy of a people who are
simultaneously the economically poorest, and artistically richest culture in
the New World.' </font></i></span><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><font color="#990000">(Donald Cosentino).</font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font color="#990000">The show at The Island aims </font><span lang="IT"><font color="#990000">to increase cultural
diversity in the arts, and to offer the opportunity the UK public to see </font></span><font color="#990000">contemporary Haitian art, created within the
social, political and spiritual context of Vodou, Haiti’s national religion
-and a culture that was born and survives due to its history of accommodation
and inclusion-. </font><span lang="IT"><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="IT"><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font color="#990000">The Ghetto Biennale is also the last of three exhibitions focusing on
collaborative - relational practices, </font><span lang="IT"><font color="#990000">designed as a single
project, which has been running at The Island over the period between September
2009 and January 2010. </font></span><font color="#990000">The three
exhibitions, collectively named </font><i><font color="#990000">Radical Relations</font></i><font color="#990000"> may be associated to one another for their
similar process of describing a tension between actions and movements of
affinity and distance.</font><font color="#990000"></font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="IT"><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT"><font color="#990000"> </font><font color="#990000"></font></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><font color="#990000">For more
information visit <a href="http://www.ghettobiennale.com/" target="_blank">http://www.ghettobiennale.com/</a></font></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><font color="#660000"> </font><font color="#660000"></font></span></div>
<br>
--<br>
The Island<br>
basement, 96 Teesdale Street<br>
London E2 6PU<br>
<a href="http://www.islandtheisland.org" target="_blank">www.islandtheisland.org</a></div>
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