Caribbean Beat — May/June 2018 (#151)

We Are Here II: Dieunie
Taking Root (2016, acrylic
on canvas, 40 x 30 cm)
experiment to the intellectual openness of her
upbringing. “I grew up with the freedom of reading
whatever material I found. I could discover and
understand things for myself. My parents always
encouraged any creative activity, although I didn’t
really decide to be an artist until my last day of
high school.”
As a child, Mars recalls, she’d always liked making
and fixing things. “I just liked doing things with
my hands . . . If my bicycle was broken, I would
find different tools to make it work. It was never a
good repair, but the bike still worked! I liked to find
solutions to physical problems, and make my own
answers to those riddles.”
One of the biggest riddles she addresses in
her artwork is the riddle of her own identity: as
a Haitian, as a woman, as a Vodou believer, and
as an Afro-Caribbean person living in a society
fractured by colonialism and often obsessed with
emigration. Her work through visual metaphors
often confronts thorny issues such as violence, the
need to preserve memories, the risks of expressing
your opinions freely, or the contrast between
Haitians’ historical dream of freedom and current
realities.
We Are Here II: Dieunie Taking Root is
a painting Mars made in 2016. It
shows a clothed woman suspended
underground next to large, deep-probing roots.
Tiny shoots emerge from these massive roots,
just starting to sprout. While the woman’s head is
barely above the ground, the rest of her body is still
buried beneath the surface. It has a scary, surreal,
drowning feel to it.
This painting happened after Tessa Mars got
to know a Haitian immigrant struggling to make
a new life for herself in Aruba: “She was cleaning
a lady’s house where I was doing a residency. I
asked her about her life.” The encounter led Mars
to reflect on the challenges of being uprooted, and
the struggle to put down new roots in another
The character of
“Tessalines” is a free warrior
woman, with two enormous
bull’s horns on her head,
wielding a sharp cutlass she
is unafraid to use
Courtesy Tessa Mars
society. “It can be like you are drowning . . . Just
keeping your head above water [is difficult],” she
comments.
There are upbeat paintings, too. Mars’s 2015
painting Nan Rara (with Marching Band) has a far
more playful, cheeky feel, with a happy, naked
woman celebrating herself — all she wears is a
colourful cloth snake/penis, a shak-shak, a pair
of sunglasses, and a toothy grin. She could be any
happy reveller during Carnival, except for the fact
that she dispenses with a costume, and bares it all.
She seems like a happy, modern, Haitian version of
the Stone Age Venus of Willendorf statuette, a universal
symbol of fertility, confidence, and creative
possibility. Mars says taking pleasure in the flesh
can be part of celebrating a joyful appreciation of
yourself, of taking power, and being whoever you
want to be.
Mars admires other young contemporary
artists from the Caribbean, such as Jamaican
Ebony Patterson, Sheena Rose from Barbados,
and Kelly Sinnapah Mary from Guadeloupe. She’s
also influenced by Haitian precursors. Another of
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