Meet the Cyberpunk Artists of Grand Rue

Driving through downtown Port-au-Prince to the dusty, vendor-lined streets of Rue Jean-Jaques Dessalines, you see glimpses of the past era of austere grandeur that once characterized the area’s wide boulevards.

Locally known as Grand Rue, this avenue cuts a north-south passage through the capital from Bel Air and La Saline all the way to La Cimetiere and Carrefour. At the southern end, Grand Rue’s once imposing multi-story buildings recall an era of successful business and thriving tourism, but the informed traveller knows that main attraction these days isn’t on the main street, but behind it.

In the labyrinthine back streets off the main avenue, surrounded on all sides by the city’s informal car repair district, you’ll find the home of the creative community that makes much of the souvenirs sold around Haiti and right across the Caribbean island. It’s no coincidence these now-famous workshops are surrounded by junkyards: this is where the Atis Rezisans find the materials for their art.

Today in Grand Rue, colonial grandeur has long since been supplanted by grit and the organic chaos of haphazard urban architecture. Makeshift homes with cement walls and blue tarpaulin doors form a maze punctuated by broken-down Mac trucks and cars with their guts exposed. Every free square meter is occupied by welders and informal vendors seated on gravity-defying chairs propped up with more luck than legs. The Haitian spirit of degage or ”make do” is alive and well here on Grand Rue.

This strange place is home to Atis Rezistans,”Resistance Artists” a collective of Haitian sculptors and artists whose home studios you can now visit. These inventors are renowned for their ability to transform junkyard debris into mixed-media sculpture, creating figures replete with sexual, spiritual and humorous symbolism that laughs in the face of bourgeois gallery standards.

In the first studio, extreme cyber-punk meets upcycling with a Vodou overtone. To the left and right, the edges of the workshop sporadically light up with the bright arcs of welding torches. Navigating your way through these several mini galleries leading to Eugene’s studio is a baptism into a creative alternate reality. The artists themselves are easily found, and you can buy pieces of sculpture directly from their creators here in the workshop-studios.  

Twenty yards into the maze-like corridors, you reach Eugene Andre’s studio. Here your eyes take in a sculpture garden like no other in the world. Imagine an empty five car parking garage covered in a staggering array of other-worldly creatures - artefacts twisted, turned and upcycled from parts pulled from wreckage. It’s diabolical and heavenly.

On any given day, you can find Eugene here, kneeling with his welding torch in hand, surrounded by a wall of twisted metal behind him and a sea of possible parts to his left. He’s a heavy-set man in his late fifties with boundless energy, and a penchant for wearing blue overalls with nothing underneath. The sweet floral scent of sacred ceremonial water and incense infuse the air with a temple-like feel, contrasting sharply with the futuristic scrapyard vision over which he presides.

On one white wall, rubber tires have been stretched and carved into 2D figures, hanging by the dozen. The rubber sculptures appear alongside their metal brethren like an army of dark rebel spirits descending into the bright Caribbean light. Rusted carburetors and doll arms - raw materials from the nearby car repair shops and junkyards - are strewn on the ground next to completed sculptures. The studio is so packed with art and ingredients that only Eugene knows his way through. If you ask, most of the sculptures and artefacts are for sale.

Several walls on the ground floor of the open-air space are adorned with sequined Vodou flags. Each intrinsically beaded piece of satin represents the cosmograms of various gods and goddesses or “lwa” in Haitian Vodou. The snake windinging down a tree is for Damballa, and the mermaid spirit “La sirene” are easily spotted. Most of these are for sale too, and much easier to take home if you don’t have too much room left in your luggage. But this is just the ground level of Eugene’s three-storey temple to creativity.

The sparsely decorated second level feels more like a classic art gallery. Windowless concrete walls are painted stark white. A series of impressive, waist high metal sculptures are neatly planted throughout a series of rooms. It’s an attempt at the orderly, but the bent towards chaos below reaches up from below in the sounds of ‘ting ting’ hammering, soldering, welding and angle-grinding.

The cacophony falls away as you climb to the third and final level of Eugene’s studio. This new addition is an open-air rooftop space. It serves as an exhibition area for fellow neighborhood artists - members of the Atis Rezistans. It’s also a classroom and meeting space. If you’re here at the right moment, it’s a brilliant place to watch the sun set over downtown Port-au-Prince with a cold Prestige in hand.

At the heart of Eugene’s counterculture movement lies the Haitian concept of Lakou, the spirit of communal sharing and bringing others along on your path to success. Folks around here call the studio “Lakou Eugene.”

Here in Lakou Eugene, rum and its un-distilled counterpart, clairin, flow as easily as the creative spirit. If you visit, no one will make you drink clairin, but there’s a good chance a cold beer - Prestige of course - will appear in your hand. I experienced this first-hand visiting during the Ghetto Biennale event of 2017.

This grassroots Haitian art movement started getting international acclaim in the 2000’s, thanks largely to partnership with UK photographer, artist and curator Leah Gordon and the Ghetto Biennale art show. Biennale art shows take place in world capitals every two years, as a marquee artistic event with high levels of prestige accorded to participating artists, curators and galleries. Eugene and Leah decided to establish a ghetto edition, right in the heart of Port-au-Prince’s Grand Rue. What better headquarters for the alternative biennale show than Eugene’s studio “Museum E pluris Anum”?

The Ghetto Biennale brings 50-100 foreign artists to Haiti every two years to co-create with Haitian artists for three weeks, culminating in a neighborhood-wide exhibition. If you’re lucky enough to time your visit to Eugene’s studio with the Ghetto Biennale event, expect a riotous fusion of local and global creative energy. It’s a photographer’s delight and the charismatic Eugene soaks up the exposure.

Read more about the Ghetto Biennale here!

Written by Emily Bauman.

Published October 2018