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• 1 media/Haiti Embodied.png media/Haiti Embodied.png media/Haiti Embodied.png 2024-10-21T19:30:39-07:00 Haiti Embodied 60 Haiti Embodied focuses on the collaborative autonomy and agency that the Haitian people share with the land they inhabit. image_header 2024-12-18T07:14:52-08:00

  By my overthrow the trunk of the tree of Negro liberty at Saint-Domingue [Haiti] is laid low – but only the trunk; it will shoot out again from the roots for they are many and deep.”

  Toussaint L'Ouverture in C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 1938

  
  The fertile land of Haiti was valued by the French only for its potential for profit. For enslaved Haitians, however, Haiti was both home and the site of their exploitation. Jacob Lawrence uses organic forms to capture this duality—Haiti as a place of colonial trauma and also of empowerment during the revolution. To combat this exploitation, a diverse community of Haitian revolutionaries planned, endured, and fought for their own freedom. Jacob Lawrence’s radical prints reflect on the collective fight against white supremacy, Western imperialism, and economic slavery that transcend historical periods into the modern era. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
                     
• 1 media/The Capture.jpg 2024-11-06T13:05:53-08:00 The Capture 20 plain 2024-12-18T07:47:35-08:00
  Left: Toussaint Captured Marmelade, held by Vernet, a mulatto, 1795 (1937) / Right: The Capture (1987)
  
  Relatively faithful to the original painting, The Capture depicts the moment when General Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution, and his forces overrun the town of Marmelade--held by French Republicans. L'Ouverture succeeded in capturing Marmelade after convincing mixed-race soldier André Vernet to change sides, later joining Toussaint’s forces to victory. Appearing through the thick sugarcane grasses, Toussaint L'Ouverture and his riders clench their stirrups as they capture the town of Marmelade. The ever-encroaching sugarcane eating away at the picture frame is a consistent motif throughout Lawrence’s print series representing the slave labor rooted at the center of the Haitian Revolution. Faced with the painful restraint of the center white horse, Jacob Lawrence creates a visually capturing scene as he illustrates the intensity behind pivotal events of the Haitian Revolution. Using muted colors and bold, angular shapes Lawrence creates strong contrasts between light and dark emphasizing the emotional gravity of the war.  
  
  *Note, a mulatto, an outdated term, meant someone of mixed-race (usually Black-white) heritage. For instance, the acclaimed French author Alexandre Dumas, the son of Thomas Alexandre Dumas (Haitian), and Marie-Louise Élisabeth Labouret (white-French), was a mulatto.