Figure-ing it Out: Laurena Finéus’ Depictions of The Complexity of Identity and Haitian History
Credit: Francois Mittins
No matter where I see them, colourful art pieces catch my attention. So it was no surprise that I immediately became entranced when I came across the artwork of Laurena Finéus on Instagram. Each of the art pieces she shares with her online audience demonstrates profound history with regards to Haiti and the Haitian diaspora through the style of figuration in a range of colours.
Laurena was gracious enough to take time away from her work during Black History Month to talk to me about her art, inspirations, and the intricate ways in which she uncovers her identity and learns more about her roots through her practice.
Since you’re creating art with the motif of family photos, do you find that your emotional experience or memory of the photo changes as you involve it in your creative process?
I’d say yes, it does change, at the core of my work you’ll find my mother and grandmother, they are pivotal entry points into my use of the family archive. Since, I have lived with them my entire life and they have raised me. I get to have access to a range of beautifully curated memories my grandmother, the beholder of our family’s albums, spent decades putting together. I have always seen them both as those strong, unapologetic and independent figures. When I was a kid it was just my mom going to work, coming back home after long hours, providing for all three of us. She was a single mother for a large part of my childhood, and of course I did not see her the way that I’m seeing her through the lens of those albums. In those albums she is young, she’s a teen who just came to Canada, with dreams, fears, and ambitions. It made me discover many aspects of her life that I simply had no idea about. It’s an overstatement to say, just how I did not know the kind of life she had before I came into this world. I think my wanting to really make a connection with this young version of my mother is essential to me because I do feel at one point that our relationship was a bit cold, because when I was a child we never had the time to connect. For us to build a relationship was just really hard, I was often at home alone with my grandmother and as an only child this can be dawning. When I became an adult, I just felt like we missed the times to build [our relationship] naturally and organically. So, now I am building it through the usage of these photos. Finally, I get a clearer sense of what she likes, how she used to dress, where she used to go, who she used to hang out with and I can project myself into those memories. It builds this emotional past that is automatically my past as well, that’s how I use those photos.
But the positioning of my usage of the family album is not only rooted in my own memory or my experiences as a kid. In many cases, there will be people closely related to me [in the photographs]. Recently I’ve been exploring the past of my extended family, cousins, uncles, and aunts. We have been blessed to all live near each other in various parts of Ottawa, and we’re a quite a big family. I’ve been able to get some of their family albums and go through them as well. And that gives me a chance to not only work with material that I know through my mom, but also with brand new memories and build upon that as well. I think a lot of the work that I do now is about my sense of identity. In a way, it’s very selfish. I like to do work that helps me explain how my life is the way it is. But I think a lot of artists do that. When I look at the archive and all the emotional baggage attached to it, it’s because I want to make those connections and understand who those people were, and who they are now, and how that persists in our relationships today. The way I see them after using those images and researching them does change. It’s a way to reinvent the past and bring the past and present together.
I think the family album is such an amazing tool for any figurative painter. It holds so many intriguing memories, moments that create discussions and are still relevant. I’m lucky enough to have my grandmother with me. She's 90 years old, but while going through these albums I find myself going up to her, asking “what was happening in this moment?” and she starts to reminisce, and I reminisce with her, building yet another bond. This becomes my memory as well: Being able to share this ownership is very special because it becomes your memory and you’ll be able to tell it. It builds tradition, and most importantly I can keep the memory alive.
I worry about the loss of the family albums, and the loss of that direct connection because of this new digital era we live in. I believe it’s something that should be kept going, it helps to create better relationships. With the albums I can place those family members into larger narratives. When I talk about political stories or historical moments in Haiti, I incorporate some of my family members as bystanders because we are part of that history. When I talk about the diaspora, it’s really about actualizing our status into that history because we’re still part of it. When you’re outside, exiled and displaced, you’re seen as other. I think it’s important to keep centralizing the diaspora into these bigger historical narratives.
Finéus, Laurena. Le mythe du baptême 1998. 2020, 24”x30”, Acrylic & collage on canvas.
You mentioned in an interview in 2019 that you use language in your titles (Creole, French, and English) to connect to wider audiences. With this in mind, are there things that you feel may not be directly translatable between languages, and which can ultimately influence the viewer experience?
Yes, language has always preoccupied me. French is my first language, and when you think about French from a Haitian context, it is intricately linked with class, because it is mostly spoken by people from the upper class. When you speak French in Haiti, it’s looked upon with respect. But there’s a really polarizing relationship there, these are the vestiges of colonialism in Haiti. Many also see it with disdain. After all, Haitian Creole was only made an official language in the late 80’s. The fact that it took until the 80’s for Haitian Creole to be considered an official language really speaks loudly for our history. As a diaspora, especially on these unceded lands in Canada, we are facing another type of dilemma in regards to language.
As Haitian novelist Dany Lafferière once said:
When I arrived in Montreal I fell right away into the national debate: that of language in Haiti, a debate in which French symbolized the colonizer, the powerful, the master who needed to be dislodged from our collective unconscious, only to find myself in another equally vicious debate in which French was now represented as the victim, the wounded, the poor colonized demanding justice. English was now the honoured master. The all powerful Anglo-Saxon. What side should I choose? Toward which camp should I turn? Toward my colonized , the French or toward the colonizer of my colonizer, the English? (excerpt of A place in the Sun by Sean Mills)
To be stuck between the two was always odd as I lived equally in Québec (Gatineau) and Ontario (Ottawa).
One thing about Haitian Creole is that it's an organic and powerful oral tradition; you have to speak it with passion and intent. I’ve always been shy and have a soft voice. So even when I try to speak it, I don’t really speak it. While French and English are very cold languages in terms of grammar and structure, sometimes I don’t feel like this represents the essence of the work. When I think about the positioning of language, references become anchors.
English feels like somewhat of a neutral language to me. That being said, the US has a concerning influence on Haitian politics and it has violently occupied Haiti in the past. I think about all of this when creating my titles and how they all operate differently. Also, I use English because it’s the language of many diasporas. I know that some don’t have any understanding of Haitian Creole or French. But they should still be able to recognize the links to their heritage. Since a lot of my paintings are about that heritage, creating that access through titles and wording is very important. Nevertheless, how I use language depends on the work and the audience that it’s intended for. If it’s a piece on colonialism and its impact, for instance, I’ll put the title in French because I want that audience to understand. While the title is in Haitian Creole, it’s for the Haitian diaspora everywhere as well as native Haitians.
I have a piece called Bon’Année 1804 which is purposely spelled a specific way; it’s shortened. The first of January 1804 is our independence day. People have a tendency to try to change the title to “Bonne Année',” but I wrote it like that to Creole-ize it and show how to pronounce it in the [Haitian] Creole sense. Even that spelling is not the correct Creole spelling, which is Bòn ane. People keep changing it, but it is supposed to be written that way [Bon’Année 1804].
This shows that people want to correct Haitian Creole when they see it. It’s saddening to me because it was the language of my ancestors, so I take it to heart when people feel they have to correct it all the time. There is a lot of history in Haitian Creole, of course it is inspired by French, Indigenous languages, from the multiple African languages that came from the transatlantic slave trade. But it is the beautiful mix that makes Haitian Creole what it is.
Does your use of colour also prove to connect to audiences differently? Does colour psychology or the perceptions of colour associations differ between your intended audience -- the Haitian diaspora, and the audience developed here in Ottawa?
I’m an intuitive painter. I really started painting during my BFA about 4 years ago. I didn’t know anything about colour theory before university. Colour, especially in painting, always seemed a very technical matter for some… but to me, I could not be bothered, still not. The fact that I started with student grade acrylics greatly impacted the way I see and work with colour. If I would have started with oil I think I would have been a totally different painter. I incorporated oil late in my practice, I was fascinated by how colour could be applied so seamlessly. It was a full-on revelation. But nonetheless, my paintings are still 70% made of acrylic. I introduce oil as a last stage.
I noticed that when I first started using my signature colour palette, or rather the whole colour palette, people looked down on it. Because some that strictly follow the painting canon see a more controlled palette as better. But I had a different approach where the message came first, my process was more “how can this colour help express what I’m trying to say?” or “How does this colour feel?”
I don’t look at colour and associate colour to an emotion. I look at the colour and ask myself, “how does this colour feel in this painting?” That’s what I mean by intuition. I will change a colour 50 times until I feel like it’s the right colour for a painting. It needs to be the right colour to have that balance, and when I see it I just know. I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of the decolonization of the creative process lately. I think we’re so focused on all of these old colonial techniques, especially with oil paint.
A thing that I’ve noticed is a lot of my white audience are more attracted to the pieces of my work with more neutral or uniform colours. For example, my piece Joshua Finéus is a beige work, it’s a piece I was experimenting within 2017. It’s often a piece people bring up when talking about my work, but it’s not my favourite. Black audiences see the stories and the people first, and the aesthetic forms second: When my Black audiences approach me about my work, they say, “I’m so happy I can see myself in your work.” Meanwhile, white audiences are more likely to say, “The colours are so interesting.” Nothing bad here, just a commonality but it made me realize that it may be because they can’t speak to the Black figures in my work. So instead it's the colour.
Finéus, Laurena. Papa Machete. 2019, 48”x60”, Acrylic and oil on wood canvas.
In some of your pieces you depict scenes of war and crime that are based in Haiti’s history, and I wanted to ask about your choices regarding what is displayed on these topics in your art. Additionally, with these pieces, Papa Machete for example, you have people in the background who also call the viewer’s attention. What further messages do the backgrounds of these scenes hold that may add to the viewer’s experience or understanding of the piece?
This is a delicate topic in some ways for me, because the idea of depicting war scenes or violence from a Haitian lens is something that I don’t take lightly. I have a piece called If I was President, where I portray three parties that are always in opposition in Haitian politics. In the piece is the first democratically elected president who is kneeling in a white suit. Behind him is the army, specifically the Tonton macoutes. Then at the forefront there’s a figure, Michèle Bennett, that is disguised in this Haitian carnival-inspired ensemble and holding a gun. If you really look at the gun, the trigger has some feathers coming out of it, which indicates that it’s a toy gun; a decorative element.
An artist friend and I were talking about violence being depicted in Black figurative works and the history of Haiti, and how [Haiti] has been framed as this violent country, a nation of “savages,” since we were the first Black republic as well as the first republic of slaves to be freed in the Americas. It took a long time for other nations like the US or Europe to fully acknowledge our newly-found independence. How they did this was by framing us as abrupt and quick-tempered people. When I think of that violence I am very careful. Violence is part of any nation's history, but it is so mingled in our history that as a painter it is my role to depict it with context and care; it has to be very subtle. The media and history has already done enough damage to our image.
In the work I mentioned earlier, there were no feathers at first. It was just a gun pointed at the president. It was my artist friend, Lyra-May, who asked, “If you think about the Haitians that will look at this piece, what kind of message comes from the usage of the gun?” That really impacted me. She gave me the suggestion of making it a play gun, making it part of the whole costume she has on. It also adds to the message of mimicry that comes with a lot of these political figures and the fake power that we give them that is enough to rule. When we had that discussion, I rethought my way of using figurative imagery. Working with found images and things that are familiar to people is a wonderful thing because you can relate to so many more people. I feel that for the audience I have, and to have as large an audience as possible, figuration is just the way to do it because these are images people understand. It’s the way you use them and reinterpret them that creates new and interesting narratives.
I’d say that the further messages in Papa Machete and these kinds of works are rooted in the history of political instability of Haiti, which has caused a lot of suffering. That’s my main point of view when I’m thinking about that idea of violence that’s inflicted on Black bodies in Haiti. It’s the poor people who are always in the centre of these abuses of power by the state.
One of the messages that run through my works like Papa Machete would be the focus on those suffering, those abused by the state, due to the political instability in Haiti.
How I try to approach this topic in Papa Machete for example, is by including a character inspired by Alfred Avril from the documentary called Papa Machete by Johnathan David Kane, which I watched in 2014. The machete was the main tool used by the slaves to cut sugar cane in Haiti when the French were still there. Alfred was taught by his dad, who was taught by his dad, this specific martial art with the machete. It became a tradition in his family, and for him it’s a way to fight for his country and for the liberation of the people and slaves. A lot of the slaves of that time used the machete to defend themselves during this revolution. That’s why this tool has so much significance in the south. You see him fighting against general Raoul Cédras, who was the head of the 1991 coup d’etat in Haiti, where they attacked the first democratically elected president, which I just talked about. Cédras put Haiti in complete terror with the army he was directing. Haiti has a history of coup d'etats and of people constantly fighting for power. Everyone below suffers from this thirst of the upper class.
When I bring up violence in any piece it’s really about giving back agency to the people who were affected by that violence. I want to represent a sense of Haiti and honour who we are. It’s really the people who are holding Haiti together, not the rich. It’s the people in the street selling food, educating their daughters at home, those are the people I look to when I create my work.
As far back as I can see on your Instagram account and your website, your art style has been fairly consistent, give or take some experimentation. In fact, I believe I saw your work at Cafe Nostalgica when I went to school at the University of Ottawa, and I distinctly remember your technique. How did you come to find that style and what has kept it so enduring for you?
A lot of people tell me that my style has been the same for a while, but I feel like it has changed, especially in my third year of university. Most of the work I’ve shared on my website has been in that time period. A fun part of having documented my work over the years is being able to see how my work has changed.
I was never one of those people who was really invested in the classic styles or the grandmasters in paintings I saw in museums. What really inspired me from the start were Black painters and the techniques they used. So many people from the diaspora Micheal Armitage, Manuel Mathieu, Hurvin Anderson, and Jennifer Packer, were using figuration all over the world. Those different contexts and how they make painting shifts was incredible to me, and gave me a love for painting which I never knew I had. I was so happy to see those representations, but it also inspired me to create my own.
I was able to figure out I was interested in storytelling. I was interested in how I could represent people in my life in painted form and I began experimenting from there.
I can be very obsessive when making, not all the time, but when I get in the zone I can paint for hours and it can go on for weeks. I think that’s why I was able to develop my style very quickly. My mind is really cluttered all the time, and I think it showed when I started, but I’m much better at processing the clutter now and being more selective with it. Negative space is also central to my works. Emptiness on a canvas can also tell you something about the story.
You spoke about the inspirations for your recent installment, The Search for Love Continues Even in the Face of Great Odds, in a blog post you made on your website. There were so many things influencing how that piece came to be, and you made a remark about how you hope it soothes the heart of someone else. How do you think it would have affected you to see that piece when you were working at that location?
It would have affected me greatly: I probably would have burst into tears. I think that’s the exact position I was thinking of when I made that piece, it was to reconnect to my past. It wasn’t that long ago, actually; it was from a really bad experience when I was in university and I was working part-time in the mall where my art piece was. The place I was working had a specific clientele and employees who didn’t really see people who looked like me. Because of that, I found myself dealing with a lot of interrogation. People didn’t trust me or didn’t want to talk to me at times. Even the staff would say things to me… things that I was surprised they felt like they could say to me, things I had wished I’d never heard. I was so upset.
Since I’ve promised myself that I would not tolerate these microaggressions again in my life. I felt like I had no voice, no one else looked like me, I had no one to talk to. The Search for Love is inspired by a book by African-American feminist writer Bell Hooks, called All About Love. She talks about this public art piece that she saw every morning on her way to work, and it was called The Search for Love Continues Even in the Face of Great Odds. To her, that was a way to root herself and bring positivity to her daily life. I thought about my commute to work every day and feeling heavy, knowing I was going to have a terrible day, and I’d have to keep it all inside again. Then I remembered this hallway that I always walked through and it was always empty. It felt like this weird dual space because it was peaceful since it meant I wasn’t at work, but at the same time there was anxiety because I was only minutes away from work. If I had that anchored message on the wall that said everything would be okay, something as simple as that would have been amazing, it would have done so much for me.
The piece is part of the project, Microcosm, which was about responding to all the social movements as well as COVID-19 when the first wave had just hit. I was thinking of the essential workers. My mom and stepdad are essential workers who had to go to work every day, jobs that they hate, even in the middle of a pandemic. Not working affected a lot of people, but going to work as an essential worker in this unprecedented situation is incredibly stressful. I thought that putting the piece in a place like the mall with essential workers could help some people and remind them that it’s all about love at the end of the day, we’re just going through great odds right now, but we’ll make it through.
Knowing the healing effect that The Search for Love piece had on you and countless others, where is another place you’d want your work to be displayed for a similar impact?
Public transportation. It’s another space where people commuting may not be in a good mind space. So I aspire to bring some positivity into the routine of someone's life, something they can look forward to in their day, especially now with essential workers, but also just something for the people who may not feel the safest on public transportation.
My installation being in Orleans which is a mainly white suburb, my usage of Black figuration really stood out there. People probably did not feel that it represented them, but it made me want to continue creating Black images and Black bodies in white areas all around Ottawa, and then Canada.
Finéus, Laurena. If I was President. 2019, 48”x60”, Acrylic and oil on wood canvas.
Your art focuses on identity in a lot of different aspects and through various intersections of experience. Do you find that you learn more about yourself and those connections of experience by creating your pieces, or do the pieces more often communicate what you already know and understand about yourself?
I don’t understand anything about myself until I make work about it. A lot of who I am today and my grasp of my identity and my past have been gifted to me through my practice. Now I have practices outside of painting that help me with this idea of recovery of the self, inner self, and consciousness. Before then, I had no way to really explore the cogs that were always moving in my head. Painting helps me to pick those thoughts out and to take time to think about what they meant to me then, and what they will mean to me later. I want to know the context of things, I want to know what the multiplicity of my identity truly means. As diasporas, we’re just second generations that are comfortable with what we’re given, and I see that a lot in my family, friends, and peers in the Haitian diaspora. We’re comfortable with not really knowing about the history of Haiti, or just knowing the history of Canada. We’re okay with not being able to speak Creole, but I ask myself, why is that? Why are we okay with that?
If you look at the history of Haitians coming to Canada in the 50’s, the assimilation was quick because they knew French. By the second wave, when my grandmother came to Canada in the 70’s, they needed to adapt in other ways because they couldn’t speak French as eloquently. They tried to make sure their kids were as incorporated with society as possible. Many people in the younger diaspora don’t have much context of what Haiti truly has been through as a nation and what its role is in history. Like I said before, we have a large role in history as being the first Black republic; that sets a precedent for nations after us who are looking toward liberation. History needs to be known so that it cannot repeat itself. That’s why I want to share [Haitian history], and it also helps me to better understand and position myself as a Haitian woman navigating the Western world. I always start making works about things that I don’t know much about, and then I’ll learn from that, which helps me and my practice grow.
You have an exhibition coming up this fall. Are there any details you can share now?
The exhibition is called Déchoukaj and it was supposed to be in April, but because of the second lockdown, they had to push it back to September. It will be taking place at the Ottawa School of Art gallery in downtown Ottawa. Déchoukaj is a Haitian Creole term which means the uprooting of a plant. The term emerged in response to the political upheaval that occurred after the exile of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier on January 7th, 1986. It announces the resumption of power by people of a particular state. To me, it’s a radical term. It’s the uprooting of a nation against the state. I wanted to link that radicality to Haitian womanhood, especially to highlight their role in the construction of Haiti, but also to ask what is the status of the Caribbean woman and their identity at large, because it’s largely forgotten. It was a way to go against the Haitian patriarchy and do a déchoukaj of this patriarchy.
When the déchoukaj happened against the Jean-Claude Duvalier regime, people wanted to take away anything that had to do with this dictatorship. People were angry, they set fire to establishments, police, anything that meant the state and power and what power means. In Haiti, power is male-dominated. The very act of painting as a Haitian woman is radical. When my grandmother came to Canada, she probably thought I’d be anything but a painter.
A lot of the artistry in Haiti is male-dominated, too. Now, thankfully, women painters are coming to the surface, like Tessa Mars, Mafalda Nicolas Mondestin, or Florine Démosthène. Being part of that is really amazing as well, even if it’s from a distance. For me, it was about highlighting the women in my close circle. I’ve tried to illustrate women in different paths of life and the individual things they bring to the table.
There is going to be an installation of vinyl letters in the space as a reference to Haitian women writers and literature, seeing as they’ve already established this extensive precedent on Haitian womanhood. They’ve constructed and told the stories of so many women that have come before me. I hold these books close to me, as ways to tell these stories that are often forgotten. I’m making references between the works of these writers and my paintings through portraits of women in my close circle. The portraits will reveal what their idea of radicality is, and, of course, what Haitian womanhood means to them. It’s building a bridge between fiction and reality, and showcasing the multiplicity of the Haitian woman through this show. So far it’s been a powerful project, researching the feminist movement in Haiti and what it looked like then vs. now, touching on sensitive subjects, like femicide. Those are themes that I’m exploring with my upcoming exhibition.
***
By the end of our interview, I was extremely appreciative of Laurena for taking so much time to explain the detail of her practice in a way that showed how deeply passionate she was about the history and representation of Haiti, specifically Haitian women and the experiences and validity of the diaspora.
Throughout our interview, I had the opportunity to do research and find many art pieces and characters who have inspired (or been a subject in) the paintings on Laurena’s website and socials. The complex histories of her ancestors and the people of Haiti are documented in her vibrant artwork and having the pleasure of hearing the thought process behind each piece gave way to new perspectives for me.
I look forward to seeing more of Laurena’s art, whether this be on Instagram, her website, or in person. Her creativity and advocacy shine through each of her pieces and tell stories that are meant to be heard and seen.