Fall 2016 Fellow
Fellow: Clarivel Ruiz
Project: Dominicans Love Haitians Movement

ABOUT DOMINICANS LOVE HAITIANS MOVEMENT

Dominicans Love Haitians Movement celebrates the beauty of commonalities through an enterprise of artists eradicating historical racial schemas to forge a future free from tyranny.

Dominicans Love Haitians Movement brings a collective of artists utilizing performance and storytelling to reflect and reconcile with over 500 years of Eurocentrism. The artists focus on exhuming mythological injustices designed and instituted by imperialism, colonialism, dictators and plutocrats to instill fear, prejudices and oppression within the island of Kiskeya (known colonially as Hispaniola). In using art as a vehicle for unraveling biases and bigotry, the project aims to heal wounds instituted by racial stigmas. By creating space to manifest the possibility of and the ability to witness violent acts without deflection, amnesia, or suppression, those acts no longer hold power or designate who we are as human beings.

A confluence of artistic works from various fields will celebrate and honor indigenous and African ancestors. The project shifts the context that Dominicans live in, by paying tribute to Haiti as the first Black Republic to liberate itself from slavery and honor the revolutionist and founding fathers from the Dominican Republic and Haiti who sought to create a unified and liberated island along with the historical ramifications of initiating a sovereign nation. Through re-invigorating the history of the Dominican Republic and Haiti as co-creators of strategies for sustainability and profit, abundance and vitality for all inhabitants, and prosperity through mutual resolutions and absolution from the past, Dominicans Love Haitians Movement works towards reinstating mutual understanding and empathy that can often be forgotten across cultural divides.

videos


News and Updates

 
23631997_10211032517837166_5407215796723349303_o.jpg
 

Since December 2017, Clarivel has organized an effort to send Black Dolls to the Caribbean, to assert the love and power of Blackness and Negritude. Clarivel writes:

As people of color we have been stigmatized by the lack of representation in media outlets. What has infused our collective narratives is the perception that we are less than, non-existent, and our worth has been devalued. By sending a Black Doll to a child in the Caribbean we are reaffirming our existence and empowering our children to love, see and imagine their future selves. Our message is a reminder that they are valued and that they matter. Please consider donating a doll today.

Follow the project on Instagram to see all the dolls that were donated and to hear when the next black doll drive will be.

In July 28- August 13, 2018 Clarivel and their collaborator Jazorink were artists in residence at NURTUREart Gallery. Their project Sewing Room: Hands On Black Freedom hosted a number of workshops for people from Haiti and the Dominican Republic to gather, create Black Dolls, and discuss race, discrimination, gender, sexuality, liberation, and decolonization.

Donate to the Black Doll Project

This July 15th, Clarivel organized an art-sharing event, titled ReImaging Dominican Independance. She invited poets, writers, and performance artists to submit and share their work that reimagines the day of independence from Spain. 

This past April, Clarivel organized a free film screening and panel discussion geared towards junior and high schools. She showed Deported, a film that follows members of a unique group of men in Haiti: criminal deportees from North America. Since 1996, the United States has implemented a policy of repatriation of all foreign residents who have been convicted of crimes. Every two weeks, about 50 Haitian nationals are deported from the United States; 40 percent are convicted legal residents who completed their jail sentence in America. Through the portraits and interviews of four deportees in Haiti and their families in North America, Deported presents the tragedy of broken lives, forced separation from American children and spouses, alienation and stigmatization endured in a country they don't know and don't understand. 

 
 

Follow Dominicans Love Haitians Movement on facebook for updates on events.


Artist Bio