Myrlande Constant

This piece of artwork is made with fabric, beads, and sequins. Myrlande Constant’s tableau depicts the ruins and aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. It was funded by the Fowler Museum with funds provided by the Fay Bettye Green Fund to Commission New Work. This piece makes the viewer feel the need to study the miseries and disasters that happen in the human life. The chaoticness of the imagery resembles how chaotic the actual event was in 2010. The visual characteristics include a border of crossbones and skulls, and angels and God looking down on the situation resembling the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones: “The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of the valley, it was full of bones. Ezekiel 37:1).” Other aspects of this piece include homes, churches, and vodou temples all being reduced to rubble. Dogs and pigs gnaw on the unburied unprotected human remains. The Catholic Archbishop Serge Miot, who is a man of God, lies dead under the fallen roof of his cathedral with a hand on a bible. Other individuals in the piece are shown as Vodouists who either carry a child in their arms, or wheelbarrow the dead and wounded to the appropriate destinations as a summoning mortal to the hand of their maker in the call of Gabriel. More individuals either pick up the ruins, or sink to the ground as if remaining upright on solid earth is not an option. Constant's piece depicted a meaning that explained the suffering as ultimately, just as with life, letting death go on. Looking forward to Ash Wednesday being faithful, and having anticipation on Eastertide's Resurrection were things that Constant reminded the victims of. The victims were shown “Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return”. And so, too the Gede will rise up to their feet, shake off the dirt, adjust their glasses, straighten their hats, grab their canes and crutches, and dance.

Al Dalaflmbo-Negrel’a L’arch en Clfi

Her works are densely beaded flags (some as large as six by seven feet). Constant's flags are much larger than traditional flags. In 2011, Constant participated in a series of exhibitions, workshops, and lectures at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island where she conducted a three-day flag-making workshop.

Constant bears witness to her nation's calamities. For example, after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, the artwork Myrlande made represented the collectivistic society through the things that were going on at the time.

Constant is particularly a well known Haitian and Vodou artist in many parts of the world. Specifically, her piece of the 2010 Haiti earthquake apocalypse was recognized as an immediate potential for becoming one of the 2011 Ghetto Biennale Exhibition in New York’s most extreme and powerful artistic visions.

Haiti madi 12 januye 2010 (Haiti Tuesday, January 12, 2010)

Myrlande Constant is a Haitian and Vodou artist who was born in 1968. Constant is married and the mother of four children.

Constant was born in Port-au-Prince in Haiti where, as a teenager, she learned the art of beading while working with her mother in a Port-au-Prince factory making wedding dresses. Once she quit that job she moved on to be one of the most celebrated artists for making Vodou drapo. Constant has taken part in the revolution in the art of drapo-making over the last two decades. She has been making flags since the 1900s. Since the 1900s, there was an abrupt shift in drapo-making, which was primarily a male art form. There are several new designers who are women now, one of them being Myrlande Constant. Because of the impact that Constant has on other people, she influences art making in other individuals, in particular Marilyn Houlberg.