Monolith

performance / sculpture, 2013

With Ryan Groendyk, Chery Jerry Reginald, Hughens Féquière, Joel Pierre and Laforèt Roselord. Photos by Lazaros. Installed on December 12th of 2013 at the Grand Rue, Port-au-Prince, as part of the 3rd Guetto Biennale of Haiti.

Monolith is a tribute and a monument to local agriculture. From Port-au-Prince we traveled by bus to the city of Saint Mark, two hours north, to visit its farmers’ market. There we purchased two sacks, with around 100 kilograms of Haitian grown rice, and transported it back to Port-au-Prince in a public bus. We packaged the rice in smaller bags weighing around 1 kilogram each; pink and blue echo the colors of the Haitian flag, bleached. At the courtyard of the E. Pluribus Unum Musée d’Art, we stacked the bags in a vertical pile resembling a phallic monument. The public of the Ghetto Biennale and members of the local community were invited to take bags home. The monument was undone overnight.

I visited a few restaurants in downtown Port-au-Prince where the menus offered two types of chicken: poul blan or white chicken, imported from the US, and poul peyi or country chicken, raised locally. The poul peyi was always more expensive because imported chicken is cheaper. This also happens with several staples of Haitian agriculture such as mangoes, coffee, sugarcane, plantain and of course, rice.

After the 1994 coup d'état that ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country drastically reduced its food import tariffs, undermining local agriculture. Soon cheap imports flooded the markets and local farmers turned to exports, creating a state of alienation and permanent food crisis. Haiti became dependent on imported goods from the Dominican Republic, the US and others.