Leslie Brice, Department of Art and Archaeology
Graduate Fellow, 2002-2003

Leslie Brice studied art and art history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in 1998 received her M.A. in art history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Currently Leslie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, studying the arts of the African Diaspora. She is working on her dissertation, The Aesthetics of Power and Resistance in Haitian Vodou, which focuses on the visual culture of Vodou in relation to historic, social and political developments in Haiti. This past summer, with a travel grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Leslie spent six weeks in Haiti conducting research for her project. Leslie is also interested in the (mis)representation of Vodou and last spring presented a paper entitled "The U.S. Military Occupation of Haiti and Representing the Vodou 'Other.'"

Fellow's Project Description
The Aesthetics of Power and Resistance in Haitian Vodou

Haitian Vodou is a spiritual system and lived philosophy originating in African and Amerindian traditions. It is a system that empowers the collective and the individual through healing, strengthening solidarity, and building community. Vodou is also a visual culture: through the objects and performances people create, they re-envision their histories, empower themselves, adapt, and locate their place in the world. Vodou, then, may be conceived more as a process shaped by practitioners than as a static entity. To understand this process better, particularly its visual and performative aspects, it is necessary to consider the development of Vodou within a historic, social, and political framework. My dissertation, The Aesthetics of Power and Resistance in Haitian Vodou, explores this framework of Haitian experience and how its elements coalesce to shape Vodou practice, the objects used in practice, and the space that practice creates. Central to this framework are the practitioners. Therefore, my dissertation also examines the relationship between the production of visual culture by practitioners and Vodou practice. More specifically, I consider material production in relation to agency and evaluation, and how these factors reshape the structures of practice as Vodouists evoke historic rituals and events.

The graduate student fellowship at the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora provides me the opportunity to complete the research for and write three of the five chapters as well as the introduction of my dissertation. I provide a brief summary of the dissertation content here. In the introduction, I define the aesthetics of power and resistance, survey the related literature on Vodou, and outline my methodological and theoretical framework. In the first chapter, "The Early Intersections of History, Politics, and Social Structure in the Haitian Experience," I contextualize the development of Vodou in order to explain why the ideology of resistance permeates Vodou philosophy and practice. Chapter two, "Remapping Landscape and the Production of Vodou Sacred Space," examines the dynamic production of sacred space in terms of the ritual remapping of landscape and the ounfor (temple). The third chapter, "Vodou Altars: Sacred Points of Narrative, Action, and Empowerment," examines Vodou altars as aesthetic creations that (re)appropriate images and/or objects of various oppressive forces, and in doing so, offer an alternative view of history in which the oppressed take a place of empowerment. This will offer the first in-depth analysis of the subject. Time permitting, I will also complete chapter four, "Recreating the Narratives of History in Vodou Performance." Here I argue that from the first chronicles of Vodou performances, practitioners produced and embodied an ethos of resistance. Such an ethos is evident today in rituals that evoke and recreate historic events and acts of resistance.

The literature on Vodou is vast and varied; yet so few studies focus on its art. The most significant contribution to the study of Vodou art is an exhibition catalogue that appeared in 1995, Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou. With this exception, what is evident in the literature on Vodou practice is a considerable dearth of scholarly material devoted to visual material and performance. My study offers an in-depth analysis of the visual and performative aspects of Vodou practice situated in the intersecting contexts of Haitian history, politics, and social structures. By adopting a broad-based theoretical framework, I place the visual material in the larger Haitian experience.

To contextualize the visual material of Vodou, I cast a wide methodological net. While my approach draws from such diverse disciplines as art history, anthropology, archaeology, and history, it nevertheless seizes upon the intersections of these disciplines, inviting them to enter into fruitful conversation with each other. This approach complements my ethnographic research, which I base on a participant observation method. In addition, because Vodou is appropriately understood in its broader context, postcolonial theories that consider the dynamics of power structures offer an applicable framework for considering issues pertaining to underdeveloped or otherwise oppressed nations and their cultures. Because Vodou, from its inception, has been systematically "othered," oppressed, and forced into political, economic, and social power struggles, postcolonial theories can shed light on the dynamics of this situation. Moreover, I engage ritual and performance theories, as well as draw from scholars who consider agency and production in material culture as these factors relate to practice.

For the last two years I have worked closely with the Temple of Yehwe, a Vodou community in Washington, D.C. In doing so, I have attended meetings and various services to the deities, or lwa, conducted interviews with practitioners, and photographed altars and sacred space. During the summer of 2001, with a travel grant from the Committee on Africa and the Americas of the University of Maryland, I conducted fieldwork in Mariani, Haiti for three weeks. During that time I videotaped seven Vodou services; participated in a week-long seminar presented jointly by the Peristyle de Mariani and the Ayizan Foundation; learned sacred drumming rhythms of the major Vodou rites; photographed the interiors of three ounfors; photographed a Kanzo service (a ceremony held at the end of initiation); and interviewed Vodou practitioners.

I continued research in Haiti this past summer with a travel grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. I conducted research at two rural Vodou communities in northern Haiti. At Katye Morin I filmed and photographed three ceremonies in addition to interviewing practitioners. At Limonade, I photographed altars and sacred space. In western Haiti, I conducted research at a Vodou community in Gressier. There I documented two ceremonies, photographed sacred space and altars, and interviewed practitioners. In the Fort Mercredi neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, I documented a healing ceremony, photographed sacred space and altars, and interviewed practitioners.

In addition to the ethnographic work, I did research at the Institut Saint-Louis de Gonzague Archives, Bibliothèque Nationale d’Haiti, Bibliothèque des Pères du Saint-Espirit, and the Fondation pour la Presentation, la Valorization et la Production d'Oeuvres Culturelles Haitiennes. I also consulted the collections at the Musée du Panthéon National and the Bureau National d'Ethnologie. Finally, in order to gain a better understanding of Taino (Amerindian) culture, I researched at the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

The ethnographic and archival research conducted over the past two summers in Haiti and the Dominican Republic provides me with data for three of my dissertation chapters to be completed this fellowship year. This work builds upon on-going ethnographic work in Washington D.C. and continuous research in local museums and archives thus providing material to contextualize my fieldwork. With the graduate student fellowship at The David C. Driskell Center, I have the extraordinary opportunity to finish researching and apply my fieldwork to the writing of my dissertation.