Junior’s Story

PETIONVILLE, HAITI — Junior paints everyday. Bright colors on clothing, Creole slogans on sheets, acrylic on canvas; it doesn’t matter, his need to create is constant. Lyonel Elie, Jr., 30, has lost his home but not his art. His house, a concrete bunker cemented to a steep hillside in Petionville, is cracked. Too unstable to sleep in, but too solid to abandon, he spends his days there painting, cooking for family and talking with friends. At night he joins a band of rappers, artists and musicians camped in a tent city on the grounds of the Frere de l’inscription Chretienne monastery. They’ve unwillingly traded the immutability of concrete for the impermanence of sticks and sheets.

Lyonel, better known in Haiti as Junior, paints with passion. His work is a reflection of Haiti; her history, her politics, her culture are both his inspiration and his subject. He comes from an artistic family, his father is an actor and his sister draws and paints as well, but his formal study began in 2001 at the Ecole Nacionale des Arts in Port-Au-Prince. The political turmoil surrounding the removal of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide forced him to abandon his studies in 2005. Political gangs and gun violence made it impossible to get to classes. He has exhibited regularly since leaving school with major shows in 2006, 2007 and 2009 including a private show at the Haitian Consul. He expected to break out this year with two big shows scheduled this spring, but the institutions were leveled in the quake.

Now he’s at a crossroads. “I need change,” he says. “In my city, my life, I need to rebuild. I have many friends and family who have died. Thank God I survived, because I see, I see, I see. People keep doing the same thing, fighting for something to be changed, to realize good things in society. I need change. Change in the country. Too many homeless, too many poor.” He camps with friends in a corner of the settlement, and in the afternoons they get together and freestyle songs about life in Haiti. His friends didn’t have much before the earthquake and now have even less. Junior does what he can to keep everyone together. “Everyone has a mission on Earth. My mission is art, like Gauguin, Da Vinci, Kasimir Malevitch, Van Gogh. I have to let everyone know I’m a messenger.” He paints his messages on the sheets that serve as walls in his tent community, and gives money to the poor when he sells a painting. “The rich are gonna be rich, rich, RICH! And the poor don’t have a chance.

“I work seven days,” he continues. “I’ve got no time to eat. It’s about the work. Sometimes I take a brush, but I can’t paint. Too much misery in the country.” On a tour of the rubble field that was once his neighborhood, Junior and his good friend, Darbouze Laxima, climb the impossibly steep debris pile. Surveying the empty, cracked houses they pause to examine a handful of family photos scattered in the ruins of a home, then carefully line them up on the bottom step of the stoop. “There’s Nobody in the Ghetto,” they sing mournfully to each other along the way. “There’s Nobody in the Ghetto…”

Haiti Lyonel Elie, Jr – Images by André Chung

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 5:48 pm and is filed under What's Going On, fit to print. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.