Ghetto Biennale – Invisible Mirrors

February 17, 2025

Campaign to Save Atis Rezistans Art Work

My colleague Leah Gordon has created a JustGiving campaign to raise funds to store and transport a group of Atis Rezistans artworks from LA to New Orleans. You can read more about the situation in the link. Please share the campaign with your networks.

FUNDRAISER FOR ATIS REZISTANS

The situation in Port-au-prince is deteriorating rapidly and the gangs appear to be systematically targeting the Grand Rue region which was home to Atis Rezistans as well as a rich and vibrant informal economy.

At least three former participants in the Ghetto Biennale have been killed in the last couple of months, caught in cross-fire between gangs and police. Most of the artists have had to move to other neighbourhoods, losing all their possessions, separated from family and community and having to find huge deposits for higher rents.

Leah Gordon has organised a pop-up one night exhibition at Ruby Cruel in Hackney (London) on Saturday August 31st 2024 from 6pm – 9pm to help raise money for the artists’ relocation and plain survival costs. There will be works for sale by Andre Eugene, Jean Claude Saintilus, Wesner Bazile, Getho Jean Baptiste, and many more. This is a one-night crazy price bonanza! There will also be many art works donated made by former Ghetto Biennale participants. So come along and get a great piece of art.

Haitian music and cocktails!

Ruby Cruel
250 Morning Lane,
London E9 6RQ

Hackney Central or Homerton Overground Station or Bethnal Green tube

rubycruel.com @rubycruel
FOLLOW @ghettobiennale_official FOR ARTWORK REVEALS IN THE COMING WEEKS

If you can’t make it, you can donate or buy via Leah Gordon.

A works list and prices can be forwarded.

“Finally an authoritative book on that weird, complex figure of the zombie that delves deep into the dark heart of the matter rather than skating the surface. John Cussans is that rare writer who can bring to bear anthropology, cultural studies, colonial and post-colonial history, philosophy, politics, folk-lore and a love of pulp fiction and film to offer a compelling story about how a marginal superstition from the Caribbean became the defining monster of our times. Prepare for a wild ride that moves elegantly from Hegel and Haiti, via Mesmerism, James Bond, Georges Bataille and Surrealism to Papa Doc Duvalier and Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors, always steadily illuminating a path through a forest of delirious details. A truly marvellous journey.”

Roger Luckhurst, author of Zombies: A Cultural History

“Cussans rejects exceptionalist explanations of Vodou and the zombie to present a nuanced description of those phenomena within the international political, economic and cultural environment in which both the realities and the inventions are situated. This comprehensive work is a must read for anyone wishing to understand more about the destinies of African-based religions in the Americas, and especially concerning the uses and abuses of Haitian cultural phenomena by outside interests.”

LeGrace Benson, author of Arts and Religions of Haiti: How the Sun Illuminates Under Cover of Darkness and President of The Haitian Studies Association.

“No one alive, or – almost certainly – deceased, has thought about zombies more voraciously than John Cussans. While the outcome of this feasting is not pretty, what it has unearthed cannot be laid to rest again. Those who doubt the consistency, deep historical momentum, or global significance of the ‘zombie-complex’ will find all such reservations fundamentally challenged by this troubling book. Subsequent to this meticulous and wide-ranging process of exhumation, it is no longer plausible to deny that an inexterminable anticipation of undead uprising continues to define the horizon of our world.”

Nick Land, author of Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism.