Above: Milocan Tous Les Saints Tous Les Morts (c .2000) by Myrlande Constant 

Happy Holidays from DART: Design Arts Daily
Peggy

Myrlande Constant is acknowledged as the matriarch of a generation of contemporary Haitian Vodou flag makers. She began her creative journey more than twenty years ago after leaving her job in a wedding gown factory in Port-au-Prince. It was here and from her mother, who also worked in the factory, that the artist learned and perfected the painstaking beading skills that have helped her to revitalize the flag tradition in her home country. 

Constant was one of the first women to make Vodou flags and is credited with innovating the use of solid round and cylindrical beads in addition to flat sequins. She also works on an unprecedented scale, creating sweeping religious, mystical, and political narratives that come to life as the materials pick up the surrounding light. The work shown here is 42-1/2 x 56-1/2 inches.

Vodou flags are used in religious ceremonies to mediate between the worlds of human and spiritual concerns. In her act of flag making, Constant has also navigated dualities of world views: male and female/traditional and innovative.. In this piece, Constant calls on the living and the ancestors, saints named and unnamed, and those who are present and those who are not, so all are included in this homage to the Vodou ceremony.

The work shown here, Milocan Tous Les Saints Tous Les Morts (c .2000) is in the collection of the American Folk Art Museum. Constant’s work has recently been seen in exhibitions at the Venice Biennial, The Fowler Museum,  Hauser & Wirth NY and Ft. Gansevoort. More here