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Artist Exhibitions:
1998 La Grand Arche Museum
Paris - France
1998 Bibliotheque Municipale
Nantes - France
1998 Convention Center
Los Angeles, California
1997 Lobby Art - World Bank
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
1996 Bienal Internacional de
Pintura
Cuenca, Ecuador
Special Award
1995 Galerie Marassa
Por-au-Prince, Haiti
1993 Suntrust Bank Lobby
Miami, Florida
1992 ...
Further Information
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Artist Reviews:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Statement for Marithou Dupoux
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."TAKING VOICE
The Works of Marie Therese Dupoux
From since the beginning of what is now known as Haiti—the First Black Republic
Haitian women artists have contributed to the visual arts in diverse and stimulating
ways. Whether as creators and innovators of numerous forms of artistic expression,
important patrons and collectors, they have been and continue to be significant
contributors to Haiti’s production of visual meanings. For the most part, however,
traditional art history has systematically excluded or masked women’s participation in
the visual arts. Instead of recognizing the social barriers to entry women faced when
trying to engage with the art world, the discipline has generally deemed women’s
contributions as non-existent or inferior to those of men’s. As a gendered discourse, art
history has also contributed to the socially constructed sexual divisions of a patriarchic
society. The majority of art historians have celebrated and privileged individual
creativity as the apogee of artistic greatness, which they then assigned as the property of
only a select masculinity. It took the intervention of feminism in the late 20th century to
begin to reframe the discipline. The feminist engagement helped to move attention
away from the idealization of both the autonomous creative artist and the formal
properties of art works and towards new theoretical positions. Some of these stances
include challenging the normative art historical timeline and ideas of stylistic
development, understanding of the social investment in cultural values and recognition
of the role of gender, class and race in social formations. The feminist critique has also
helped to redress the almost complete neglect of women artists, patrons and scholars by
art history and to destabilize the stereotyped views of art made by women.
In the course of the last decades, the significant contributions by Marie Therese
Dupoux have helped Haitian women artists to exit the morass of invisibility to boldly
present themselves. Reflection of the Haitian Diaspora evolution, they have now gained
ground on the innate international artistic standards. This exhibition acknowledges their
contributions to Haitian art and the traces of their influences can be seen through
Taking Voice-The Works of Marithou.
Vessels of Memory
An investigation of memory through the production of visual meanings offers cues about
history, gender and political relations and aesthetic. Such an approach to memory in Haitian
art is important for understanding the contexts in which history is both evoked and produced
through visual narratives. In the works of Marithou, history is not passive; expressive forms
change and their flexible semantic structures allow for the creative re/construction of
memory providing evidence of past truths by rendering concepts, emotions and interactions
concrete. Through the work of Marithou, we feel a sense of security as expectations of how
things always have been and should be are confirmed, even as new solutions are sought to
meet evolving needs.
The ways memory is imagined by Marithou include: The Body as canvass of memory,
Memory Places or Places of Memory, Memory in Movement and Dance, Memory in writing
etc….
The body as canvass of memory
Marithou constructs the body as surface and interior, container and contained- a “place of
meeting and transfer” where memory is created, perpetuated, and sustained. Body memory is
“intrinsic to the body and to how we remember in and by and through the body”. The black
body itself becomes the site of inscriptions of pain or of history and thereby is able to evoke
particular memory. Thus memory unmasks the “now” of bodily experience. For Marithou
these body memories are evoked consistently and populate her work. Sometimes it is a
dominating figure of a body. Often they appear as the body of a woman as life giver, life
force in the culture’s lexicon, Earth Mother. But there are also bodies of pain, of loss, of
trauma, distorted Middle Passage bodies in the surrounding field.
Memory Places or Places of memory
Places of Memory provide another model for understanding how Marithou’s mnemonics
generate the semantic dynamism and social construction of Haitian contemporary thought.
Recollection of these places includes meaningful configurations of selected, negotiated
events. A locus of memory is a landmark around which past events structure present
memory. As both actual and imagined place, places memory can be “both places and topics,
where memory converges”. For example, the house, particular spaces which contain
memory for us are mnemonic triggers. Thus for Marithou, a series of places – gingerbread
houses become also mnemonic devices that generate a host of other emotional and therefore
historical associations…..
Babacar MBow
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