Shneider Léon Hilaire (b. 1990) is a Haitian visual artist based in Port-au-Prince. He began teaching himself the rudiments of drawing by reproducing cartoon characters at an early age, and later sharpened his sense of observation and reflection by making self-portraits. As Hilaire began to receive commissions, he decided to focus on portraiture.
As an adolescent, he was committed to art-making and familiarized himself with the techniques of realistic painting. He registered at Le Centre d’Art de Port-au-Prince, where he developed his own style and visual language with the help of internationally renowned artists, such as Mario Benjamin, Marie Hélène Cauvin, and Frantz Zéphirin.
Hilaire’s work represents the society he lives in with its beliefs and preoccupations. In his paintings, he channels the profound faith of a people attached to their ancestral heritage and constantly challenged by adversity.
Shneider Léon Hilaire (b. 1990) is a Haitian visual artist based in Port-au-Prince. He began teaching himself the rudiments of drawing by reproducing cartoon characters at an early age, and later sharpened his sense of observation and reflection by making self-portraits. As Hilaire began to receive commissions, he decided to focus on portraiture.
As an adolescent, he was committed to art-making and familiarized himself with the techniques of realistic painting. He registered at Le Centre d’Art de Port-au-Prince, where he developed his own style and visual language with the help of internationally renowned artists, such as Mario Benjamin, Marie Hélène Cauvin, and Frantz Zéphirin.
Hilaire’s work represents the society he lives in with its beliefs and preoccupations. In his paintings, he channels the profound faith of a people attached to their ancestral heritage and constantly challenged by adversity.
PANTÉON PROJECT/ DIASPORA VODOU SURVIVAL KIT
Image as decoy is a practice that is still seen around the world today.
Mining historical and cross-cultural references, the Pantéon series reenact both religious and historical narratives as African-American he/sheroes are cast as the various Spirits/Gods of African derived religions of the Caribbean such as Vodou and Santeria. As these religions were historically banned and had to go “underground” both in colonial and post-colonial societies, mass-produced images of saints were used as a decoy to represent the various Gods. The practice persists to this day in the Caribbean and its diaspora, where people still pin some of these images in their house. The decision of using archival digital print as a medium was a natural one, given that these are images that are to be disseminated and can lend themselves to be of everyday use.
Each DIASPORA VODOU SURVIVAL KIT includes:
22 10"5/8” x 14"5 Prints
1 Table of Content Poster 21” x 29”
1 Porcelain sculpture (edition of 21) 3.5" x 1.5" x 1"
1 Birch plywood suitcase box (11"5/8 x 15"1¾x 2"1/4)
Edition of 21
$2,500
*All Editions are printed at Coronado Print Studio with Master printer Pépé Coronado
Vladimir Cybil Charlier is a New York-based multi-disciplinary artist. She was born in Queens, New York, to Haitian parents and grew up between New York City and Port-au-Prince, an experience that continues to inform her work. She earned a Master’s in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts and attended The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Trained as a painter, Cybil has delved into many artistic mediums. Over the years, her work has focused on developing a cohesive language to articulate a diasporic culture and the search for that language has been the thread linking her different bodies of work, whether mixed-media paintings, prints, or three-dimensional work. Early on, Cybil started mining various forms of popular art and crafts from the Caribbean, looking at self-taught painting traditions, textile work, as well as the spiritual traditions and sacred art forms of the African diaspora; in essence rethinking these traditions within a diasporic perspective.
Cybil has been a resident at the Studio Museum in Harlem and more recently, at Fountainhead studios in Miami. Her work has been featured in the 2006 Venice Biennale and exhibitions at El Museo del Barrio and The Bronx Museum. Cybil participated in the Biennial del Caribe in the Dominican Republic, the Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador, and the Panama Biennial in 2003. Her work has been included in Le Grand Palais in Paris and shows such as Relational Undercurrents at MOLA, Bordering the Imaginary at BRIC House, Caribbean Crossroad at the Perez Museum in Miami, and a solo exhibit at Five Myles Plus Space. A lifelong educator, Cybil lectures regularly and recent talks have included the LASA congress in Boston, Columbia University, Rutgers University, the CUNY Graduate Center, and Notre Dame University.
She currently resides in Harlem and works from her studio in an old indigo mill.
Jonathan Demme
Jonathan Demme (1944-2017), was an American film director who was known for his eclectic body of work, which ranged from feature films to concert movies to documentaries (Source: Britannica). Films include Haiti: Dreams of Democracy (1988), Stop Making Sense (1984). He is best known for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1993) and Rachel Getting Married (2008).
“My love of Haitian art is not only because of the tremendous sensory, emotional, and inspirational impact the work has on me. That rich sense of history, the vivid and utterly unique cultural and spiritual specificity of Haiti, the continued awareness of the ongoing and epic struggle of the Haitian people to somehow halt and reverse the many harsh realities that have been inflicted on the country by centuries of global exploitation – these giant factors all collide and collude within the work in an incredibly heady, emotionally-dense way.”
