About New Vision

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Creative expression is essential to daily life in Haiti, where artists of all ages commonly exhibit their work alongside one another, participating integrally to the ongoing process of shaping and reshaping the broader culture.

 

The artworks in this collection, made by Lesly, Honald, and students ranging in age from about 5 to 20 years-old, reflect this environment of shared artistic practice, drawing on personal experience, memory, symbolism, spirituality, and imagination, and rendered in vivid colours. At the same time, artists' ideas, personal pursuits, and expressive mark-making demonstrate a wide range of individual approaches. Scenes of public life coexist with depictions of outward-reaching visions, while symbolic colours and shapes adorn figures who sometimes seem inseparable from the environments they inhabit.

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New Vision Art School was established in 2017 to give young people a place to learn, create, and develop their artistic practices– providing art supplies, instruction, and opportunities for students to exhibit and sell their work, while connecting them with audiences beyond Haiti.

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Lesly Pierre-Paul

 

Lesly grew up in Port-au-Prince's Grand Rue community, among artists who played central roles in developing the Atis Rezistans movement. He began as a salvage-art sculptor in this tradition before turning increasingly to painting around 2015–16. Among the artists from Grand Rue Lesly has most admired, he identifies both the celebrated artist Gurley Laurant, and the locally respected sculptor Papa Da (Alphonse Jean Junior). Lesly's own practice, and his work with New Vision, connect a younger generation of artists to this broader history of Haitian artistic experimentation. 

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Haitian Art in an International Context

 

Haitian art has a long-standing presence in international collections and art discourse. In 1944, the same year Le Centre d’Art was established in Port-au-Prince, MoMA acquired René Vincent’s Cock Fight (Le combat des coqs), helping bring international attention to the pre-existing Haitian Indigenist movement.

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Haitian artists were developing this movement to articulate cultural identity through art, and subsequent generations continued to expand and challenge how Haitian art was understood internationally. Today, Haitian artists remain represented in museums and collections around the world. Hector Hyppolite’s The Congo Queen (La Reine Congo), which remains on view at MoMA, can now be considered alongside the museum’s more recent scholarship examining how "Western" frameworks, including the categories of “primitive” and “naïve,” shaped the international understanding of Haitian art.

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A Note for Collectors

 

These works belong to a living artistic culture with a long-standing presence in international collections and art discourse. Collecting offers a direct way to engage with Haitian artistic culture while supporting the artists and the continued development of their practices.

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For these artists, international audiences are part of an ongoing exchange: their work travels beyond Haiti while remaining rooted in the communities, experiences, and artistic traditions from which it emerges. Collecting a work offers an opportunity to participate in that exchange and to give these artists a place in your own collection.

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Inquiries welcome: dansiney@gmail.com