Reeds/Wozo — Monica Sorelle

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“We are our own sun.”
– Ousmane Sembene

Reeds/Wozo
2022- , series of video, photo, and sculptural works

“Nou se wozo, nou pliye nou pa kase.”

“We are reeds, we bend but we don’t break.”

With proverb as its entry point, Reeds/Wozo is a collection of works utilizing video, photography, and sculpture to illustrate the history of Haitian people, specifically women as the poto mitan, or pillars of society, despite the weight of political and international pressure on the island. Reeds/Wozo comments on colonization, imperialism, labor, and the reverberations of revolution.

Works

Reeds/Wozo: Movement Study I
2022, two-channel HD color video with sound, 4:30

Cinematography by Juan Luis Matos
Performed by Albertte Petithomme
with archival voiceover of Professor Bayyinah Bello

Reeds/Wozo: Movement Study I features a Haitian woman in various bending positions - cooking, washing clothes, praying - symbolizing the parallels of physical labor to the durability of reeds. A clip from historian Professor Bayyinah Bello speaking on the role of women in The Haitian Revolution echoes throughout the two-channel video as she works. The women face each other, juxtaposing labor on the island with labor in Miami’s Haitian diaspora. However, in both scenes, her location is unknown and she moves without any sense of place. Where is she, and where is home?

Group Exhibitions
Miami is Not the Caribbean. Yet it Feels Like it, Oolite Arts, Miami, FL
Intertidal: Moving Images from South Florida, PAMM TV
Ojos Caribe, Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA), Miami, FL
Ojos Caribe, Homework Gallery, Miami, FL

Press
The Art Newspaper

Photo Credit: Diana Espin

Supported by Pérez Art Museum Miami’s Caribbean Cultural Institute

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