Visual Arts Review: The Dazzling Vodou Flags of Myrlande Constant
Myrlande Constant’s show in New York has been an important event this year. Her upcoming retrospective, which opens March 26 at the Fowler Museum at UCLA in Los Angeles, will offer even more — works on a grand scale which will surprise her admirers and challenge those who are viewing them for the first time. Note — the show in NY is free, as is the museum exhibition in Los Angeles.
The painterly power of her flags is dizzying. The works are complex constructions that also operate, like sculptural reliefs, in three dimensions. As in religious pictures and ancient reliefs (the upcoming Constant retrospective in Los Angeles compares them to religious and mythological paintings), the figures become increasingly familiar from flag to flag. The longer you look, the easier it becomes to take in the skills of Constant and her team that keep up with her restless imagination.
Myrlande Constant is 54 and grew up in the Haitian countryside. Her family migrated to Port au Prince, the capital, where her mother worked in a rudimentary factory making wedding dresses. Her father was a vodou priest — flags traditionally fly outside vodou temples.
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the arts fuse website.
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