JEAN-HÉRARD CELEUR

On view in the exhibition are a collection of figures called ‘Zwazo’ meaning ‘bird’ in Haitian creole. Made from tires, wood and found metal these assemblage works resemble angels or spirits, worry dolls of sorts. They feel like messengers from another realm or receptacles for our worries and desires. They might hold spirit or be used to invoke or pray. These contemporary totems, markers of people and time are objects for ritual and memory.

Jean-Hérard Celeur’s sculptures present hybrids of humanoid birds in war-like attire. Often made from found wood or car tires, his sculptures reclaim and repurpose discarded materials and the associations they carry, underlining the widespread poverty that surrounds Celeur in Haiti and the ensuing need to use all available resources to denounce it. “My work has social and intellectual aspects, and represents the people’s demands for change,” explains Celeur. “I live in the reality that deals with poverty every day.” In his studio, a standing mermaid sporting a wired hat expresses gestures of political and artistic resistance as well as a desire to bring together the divine figure with the poverty and scarcity prevalent in Haiti. Death and life, sex and celebration, violence and excess, politics, and sociological concerns, encounter each other in Celeur’s works.