‘PÒTOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince' Explores Art in Haiti
For anyone looking to add a new coffee table book to your collection of good reads, look no further. PÒTOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince is a 400-page book with visual storytelling art from a variety of artists in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. The book is written side by side in the Haitian Kreyòl and English languages and features stories from artists and editors about the struggles and successes within the Haitian art world today.
PÒTOPRENS richly details the timeline of the capital’s architecture, art, artists, culture, heritage, history, literature, music, and politics. The timeline of art and history starts in 1492 and reaches to present day.
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The book is not only intended to detail art but also to expound on the history of Port-au-Prince. In a press release, Editor Joshua Jelly-Schapiro discusses the importance of the book and what it means to Haitian culture:
“Haiti's restive and storied capital is at once a place and an idea, a geography and a history, a past and a now. Because the capital of history’s first Black republic has also been a capital of other things. The capital of a global diaspora whose members have left to live in places whose names—Boston, Brooklyn—have been adopted by the gangs that run its docks. The capital, too, of a culture of astonishing riches and depth, born of what’s still the only successful slave revolution this planet’s ever known.”
PÒTOPRENS editor, exhibition curator, and co-director of the Ghetto Biennale Leah Gordon, Miami-based, Haitian-born artist, and PÒTOPRENS exhibition curator Edouard Duval-Carrié, and Haitian-American anthropologist Gina Athena Ulysse also include their insightful stories within the book.
The book also features stories about prominent cultural spaces within Port-au-Prince, such as the Grand Rue and Carrefour-Feuilles. Furthermore, readers will enjoy never-before-seen photographs and portraits of artists. Viewers will also see sculptures, prints, paintings, murals, crafts, and more from the artists of Haiti. The book captures the essence of Haitian culture and brings it to life through this personal text.
PÒTOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince will be published by Pioneer Works Press in March 2022. Click here to pre-order your copy.
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Tags: web-original, Books, Art, Nicole Choma,
Photography by: Courtesy Pioneer Works; Leah Gordon