LOS ANGELES — Myrlande Constant’s work, a kaleidoscope of dazzling glitter, swirling patterns and intricate beadwork, is inseparable from her Haitian heritage and spiritual beliefs. Like many citizens of colonized countries, Constant’s spiritual practice is hybrid. Hers is a syncretic blend of voodoo (an African diasporic religion specific to Haiti) and Catholicism, which was established as the official religion of Haiti by the French in 1697 and remained so until 1987. This aspect of her life is so important to his art that the introductory wall of Myrlande Constant: The work of radiation at the Fowler Museum includes this quote from the artist: “After God and the Lwa (ancestral spirits), this is my mother. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand me.
The retrospective work is beautiful and exudes a sense of lived experience. Looking at Constant’s tapestries can feel like witnessing first-hand how she processes and creates meaning from this experience. His tapestries are rooted in the historically male-dominated practice of draped Vodou. While traditionally draped flags represent individual figures and designs, Constant creates entire scenes and stories through his beadwork; the resulting artwork reads like a mixture of draped and Catholic Renaissance painting, reflecting his hybrid spirituality.
Another break with tradition, some of his pieces depict historical and cultural events, such as “Haiti, Tuesday January 12, 2010” (2012). The chaotic scene depicts the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010, steeped in despair, skeletons and graves. The same scene incorporates several lwa which represent death and sexual regeneration: Gede, Grann Brijit and Bawon Samdi. Other works look to the abundant, rather than destructive, aspects of nature, such as “Negre Quimbois Lasirene Negre an Dezo” (2013), “Union of Mermaid Spirits” (2020) and “Danbhala Hwedo and Aida See Preface” (1998–2001). These three pieces represent different takes on the importance of life-giving water. In “Union des Esprits Sirènes”, Constant shows a ceremonial meal presided over by an aquatic black queen with tentacles for legs, while in “Nègre Quimbois Lasirene Negre an Dezo”, she celebrates the different characteristics of water: salty, muddy and cool. .
The retrospective also includes a short video directed by Natacha Giafferi-Dombre, “Myrlande Constant: Staging the Invisible” (2023). Filmed in the artist’s studio and home in Haiti, the piece contextualizes the work and the cultural sphere from which it originates – far from the lands of UCLA. The video provides insight into Constant’s labor-intensive process, against the backdrop of the sounds of chickens and goats, and what I assume are a couple of his four children moving in and out of view. of the camera. The artist also talks about her mother’s influence on her work – for example, she learned beadwork working alongside her mother while making wedding dresses in a factory in Port-au-Prince.
As you would expect of an artist whose work is inseparable from her life, Constant expresses no intellectual distance from her art. For her, art and life are a blend of joy and pain, ritual and healing, and a celebration of nuance and interconnectedness.
Myrlande Constant: The work of radiation continues at the Fowler Museum (308 Charles E. Young Drive North, Westwood, Los Angeles) through August 27. The exhibit was curated by the Fowler Museum at UCLA and curated by Katherine Smith, Fowler Curator and Haitian Arts Research Associate, and Jerry Philogene, Associate Professor of American Studies at Dickinson College.
