“Nan Dòmi. Las canciones que cantamos” [Nan Dòmi. The Songs We Sing] is a solo exhibition by Haitian-born artist Tessa Mars. The exhibition opened on April 27, and will be on view until September 22, 2024, at Casa del Lago UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), in the section Sala Resquicio – Arte joven latinoamericano. There will also be a guided tour and catalog presentation with curator Eva Posas on June 1, 2024. Casa de Lago UNAM is located at Bosque de Chapultepec (Primera Sección S/N), San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico City, Mexico.
Description: The work of Tessa Mars, born in Haiti, traces identity politics among the migrant population of her country and expresses a decolonial imaginary from the spiritual encounter between the human, other forms of life, nature, territory, and the formation of community.
In Nan Dòmi. Las canciones que cantamos, Mars takes a personal dream and a Haitian Creole lullaby as a starting point to meditate on the migratory journey, memory, and recognition of the historical violence that is still perpetuated today. “Dodo Titit” is a lullaby that is sung to children in Haiti, the same one that Mars’ mother used to sing. Although this song provokes a comforting sensation, its mysterious effect is based on a lyric where fear promises guidance and salvation.
In Mars’ daily life, this song has been presented in different forms. Among them, she visits her in dreams of trees and landscapes in which she lies a traveling person. In that other temporality, we witness the suspended wait for rest. In the end, it is insomnia that drags her along the journey. By telling us this dream, Mars evokes a metaphorical mark that combines ancestral wisdom with the experiences of struggle of Haitian dreamers or migrants, in the unavoidable search for a good life.
Curated by Eva Posas (Mexico), the third exhibition in our hall dedicated to young Latin American art presents the work of Tessa Mars, a Haitian artist who, through paintings, audio pieces, and papier mâché objects, explores ideas such as migration, the sense of belonging, spirituality, and the construction of community identity.
See a long version of the exhibition text here.
Tessa Mars (HT): Tessa Mars was born in 1985 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She currently lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Mars is a visual artist interested in the exploration of gender, landscape, migration and spirituality related to Haitian history and the Caribbean diaspora. Using paint and papier mâché as main materials, the artist distances herself from colonial narratives and rigid ideas about identity to embrace other forms of collective belonging. Mars’ work has been featured in the exhibitions Your Presence Does Not Escape Me (2023), at Tiwani Gallery in London; and Who Tells a Tale Adds a Tail (2022), at the Denver Art Museum in the United States. Currently, Mars is a beneficiary of the “Mellon High Impact Scholar from Latin America” program at the University of Texas at Austin (2023-2024). Mars is a graduate of the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten Academy in Amsterdam (2020-2022).
Eva Posas (MX) is a curator, writer and editor. Her career has developed along the borders of curatorial and editorial work, the politics of language, the power of the subtle, identity, and intergenerational memory as a form of aesthetic reflection. She has training in literary and language studies. Likewise, she carries out research and dissemination activities around the Binnizá culture. She lives between the Netherlands and Mexico. From 2012 to 2018, she was editorial director and curator at Fundación Alumnos47, where she researched the role of publications as social provocation, narrative as a curatorial instrument, the intersection of public and private spaces, in addition to editing as a subversive methodology. In 2019 and 2020 she shaped and curated the Reading Material program, in the Material Art Fair. Interested in collective learning processes, Posas has been part of the team behind Materia Abierta since 2019. In that same initiative, she was co-curator, together with Mônica Hoff, of Ni apocalipsis ni paraíso in 2021. In 2020-2021 she was resident curator at Jan van Eyck Academie and a fellow at Nieuwe Instituut in 2022 and 2023. She has collaborated with various institutions in Mexico City, Guatemala, Bogota, Gateshead, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Basel, Zurich, Berlin, Copenhagen, Venice, Los Angeles and New York, through books, articles, educational initiatives, exhibitions, and public art programs. She is founder of Xigagueta, an artistic research program from Binnizá territory, and author of Mbuchi: Turtle Words. On Forbidden Mother Tongues, published by PrintRoom in 2024.
Excerpts translated by Ivette Romero. For more information, see the original text at https://casadellago.unam.mx/nuevo/evento/tessa-mars
“Nan Dòmi. Las canciones que cantamos” [Nan Dòmi. The Songs We Sing] is a solo exhibition by Haitian-born artist Tessa Mars. The exhibition opened on April 27, and will be on view until September 22, 2024, at Casa del Lago UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), in the section Sala Resquicio – Arte joven latinoamericano.
