Sosyete (Society)

Karim Bleus is part of a group of Haitian sculptors in Port-au-Prince who frequently salvage and re-purpose materials from everyday recycled and found objects such as wood, tin cans, forks and nails. His religious sculptures are created through a strong sense of identity and pride. As visual analogues to local economies, they are intertwined with stories of struggle, survival, and cultural innovation. His artistic process makes space for a sense of liberation, allowing for improvisation and moments of spontaneity and chance, linked to music such as hip-hop and rap. Bleus has developed a material vocabulary related to and emerging from everyday experience, linked particularly to the polyphonic urban landscape of Port-au-Prince. Within the Grand Courts, Bleus’s small figurative sculptures find both resonance and juxtaposition with surrounding sculptural works. While differing in their materiality, construction and in their referentiality to place, these assembled figures communicate their stories through gestural symbolism, movement and form.