The Institution of Oblivion is a multidimensional collaboration established with the Office of Human Rights in Haiti and is concerned with the inhumane pre-trial detention of inmates. Haiti’s judicial system lacks the right of habeas corpus, which requires a person under arrest to be brought before a judge. Individuals accused of a crime fall victim to a precarious system, often descending into institutional oblivion with no legal recourse. Haiti’s legal and prison system is an overt expression of the country’s underlying economic disparity, emphasized by the fact that the entire state system is administered in French while the majority of people speak Haitian Creole.
“Petite Papier” are notes written on whatever available paper that inmates hand to visitors, lawyers, or anyone exiting the prison, screaming for recognition of their existence and their rights, a message-in-a -bottle seeking anything that might bring hope and salvation.
Institution of Oblivion part of Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago.
The exhibit will travel to five venues from now until the fall of 2019
Project supported by the Getty Foundation Pacific Standard Time
Below please see the travel schedule for Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago.
SUMMER 2018
May 31 – September 23, 2018
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery
& Sugar Hill
Columbia University, NYC
FALL 2018
October 13 2018 – January 13, 2019
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum
SPRING 2019
Portland Museum of Art
SUMMER 2019
June 22 – September 8, 2019
Delaware Art Museum