Haiti Now!

Image above: Little Crippled Haiti (2006), by Édouard Duval Carrié; mixed media on aluminium, 48 x 48 inches; courtesy the artist and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery

In May 2007, the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies, in partnership with the University of Liverpool, hosted Haiti Now!: Art, Film, Literature, a three-day seminar on contemporary Haitian culture. The programme built on that of UWI’s 2004 Haitian bicentenary conference, and asked how Haitian culture is adapting to the realities of the twenty-first century. Participants included American writer Madison Smartt Bell; Haitian artists Mario Benjamin, Édouard Duval-Carrié (one of whose paintings appeared on the cover of the May 2007 CRB), and Maksaens Denis; Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier; and scholars Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, Martin Munro, Charles Forsdick, Jerry Philogene, and J. Michael Dash.