Ayiti Toma II: Faith, Family, and Resistance at Luhring Augustine

Philome Obin (circa 1950) “Issa and the Artist”; 20 x 16 inches, oil paint on board.

By JOHN DRURY February 4, 2025

There was no Ayiti Toma I, and this exhibition organized by Tomm El-Saieh, at the Luhring Augustine Gallery, is meant to mark by its naming, that egregious absence. Tomm El-Saieh is the grandson of musician, orchestra leader and gallery owner Issa El-Saieh (1919-2005). He carries on, in place of his grandfather Issa, who in the 1950’s opened the most famous salon in the country. The legend Issa, once also, managed the storied Hotel Oloffson, and appears in Graham Greene’s infamous book set about the hotel, “The Comedians”, as the character Hamit. In the mid-1960’s, he was imprisoned by the notorious Papa Doc regime.

Issa El-Saieh is represented here in a painting (ca. 1950; “Issa and The Artist”), by the artist Philome Obin (1892-1986). Power need not come in the gargantuan, and most Haitian work of this era is quite modest in scale, in contrast the pomposity the period in America. In Haiti, less might truly hold more. The magnetic properties of small, are understood, and revel in the intimacy of an amulet. You are pulled close. Issa discovered dozens of now celebrated artists, and this homage by the master Obin, marks a heartfelt appreciation for patronship, once fashionable. The conspicuous pink background, might serve in recognition perhaps, “Mistress” Ezili Freda, the goddess of love and luxury.

Andre’ Pierre (1955-1960) “Dambala”; 14 x 9.5 x 4.5 inches, paint on calabash as depicted in the “Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou” catalog and included in the exhibition.

Haiti seems always in some state of disaster…the present catastrophe, like so many others, politically driven and coup-sparked (with the assassination of then President Moise, in 2021). Change (if little), too often follows death on the island and Moise is yet to be replaced, by democratic election. The stranglehold of the bastardly and colonizing French long held the people in ever-growing desperation and poverty, result a ransom for independence (in 1804!), when the French regime demanded compensation for the loss of its property and slaves. That incredulous debt wasn’t paid off, until 1947. America too, has long brokered shadowy, backroom deals and puppet-master tactics on this portion of the island (the comparatively prosperous Dominican Republic, occupies the Eastern side). Long, periods of repression, are bracketed by devastating earthquakes.

And so, how is it, that a country so often allowed only the short, and sharp, end of the stick produces such visual brilliance? It is perseverance, in respite desperation. It’s a make-do demeanor; a drive to create without expectation reward. There is not careerism…or the blowing of smoke up your ass clause, attached to success, as seemingly mandatory, in the US. There is need; and often the veil of secrecy in Haitian art and religion, from behind which, humanity is left to leak / an Oz-ian wizard whose mortal being, is, once revealed, of recognized weak flesh when compared to the spirit world; the Loa / that has the upper hand.   

Georges Liataud (undated) “St. Jacques”; 66 x 55 inches, iron.

We are treated here to an amazing variety of works - sixteen by the metal sculptor Georges Liataud, alone; his large “St. Jacques”, certainly the crescendo to this glorious mass of beaten metal man, myth and beast. Toothy mortal and critter seem cut of the same cloth; confronting the viewer as unified, one. Here, in habit the substitution of Christian iconology, horse and rider lie substitute spirit possession; the practitioner, visitant Iwa. In Haitian role-reversal, person is horse. Rider is deity. Each demand we make eye-contact.

It is not since the “Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou” traveling exhibition, originating at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History in 1995 (it would grace the American Museum of Natural History, in 1998), that this quantity of quality work has found exhibition, in NYC. The girthy catalog for that exhibition, is thorough and stunning; indispensable any Haitiphile. Included in that tome and gifted here in the exhibition at Luhring Augustine, Andre’ Pierre’s “Dambala” is a depiction of the supreme Rada serpent entity, executed on the shell of a calabash. There is no Dick Blick in Port-au-Prince. It is a portrait of the intangible, the ethereal, as imagined. Most any Haitian will tell you, that ours is a world created by magic. Imagine heaven then. WM