Hands Together Cooperative Art Project Evaluation
According to 2010 project report, Hands Together Cooperative: Created in the wake of the January 12th, 2010 earthquake. It is/was made up of. Their objective was to empower their members…
Why the cocks trade: what a transnational art market can reveal about cross-border relations
In the streets of Santo Domingo, Haitian and Dominican paintings are sold side-by-side, usually by Haitian dealers attracted to their neighbour’s much larger tourist market. They are easy to tell apart, for the Haitian paintings generally conform to the naïf style, whereas the Dominican paintings feature rural scenes or Taïno designs. The cultural differences in the designs of the paintings, and their appeal to foreign tourists rather than Dominicans, lend support to decades of scholarship describing Dominican–Haitian relations as being built upon nationalism and notions of racial difference, as well as the ‘exotic’ appeal that the Caribbean holds for tourists. However, this scholarship falls short of providing a holistic account of Dominican–Haitian relations because it sidelines the crucially important role of trade – historically and contemporaneously – in structuring them. In this article, I reinterpret the history and contemporary nature of art markets in Hispaniola to argue that market relations should be considered alongside symbolic representations when assessing transnational identity politics.
Counternarratives of the Diaspora: Haitian Musical Performance in World Beat Markets
This study will investigate the performance motivations of three Haitian musicians based in South Florida who use their artistic platforms to offer a version of their country omitted from dominant media projections of the country. This study focuses on narrative as a device that allows these musicians to offer counterstories against dominantly negative media projections that have real effects on Haitians.