Pòtoprens - by Leah Gordon & Joshua Jelly-Schapiro (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The Haitian capital at the intersections of history, music, politics, religion, magic, architecture, art and literature

Published after a landmark 2018 exhibition at Pioneer Works--the first major survey of the astonishing artists of Haiti's capital city--Pòtoprens is at once a portrait of a place, a celebration of its arts and a visionary re-mapping of culture in the world's first Black republic.

In this volume, Port-au-Prince's complex present is evoked through artworks, images, oral histories and essays. These contents are organized, as was the exhibition, around neighborhoods identified with particular subjects, materials and forms.

Contextualized by leading writers on Caribbean culture, these artists' stories are situated within Port-au-Prince's rich heritage of "majority class art." As cities everywhere grow ever more critical to our changing global environment, this book articulates urban Haiti's unbroken link with its revolutionary past.

Review Quotes

Geographically focused survey shows and their accompanying publications rarely offer such depth, on the contrary, they often border on ethnography. Pòtoprens: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince succeeds wonderfully in avoiding this trap, and serves as the perfect case study for how curators and editors tasked with such projects can produce something meaningful.--Maymanah Farhat "Brooklyn Rail"