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Deserving Existence
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Near the end of my time in Haiti, I asked a good friend of mine, Jona Douge, who is one of my art students and a very talented painter himself, what he thought was the most important thing that I could tell people back in America about Haiti, and he simply requested, "just make sure that they don't forget we are here." This statement proved to me the very unfortunate reality that these people, like so many in the most neglected corners of the world, feel like they are forgettable. Centuries of being ignored has convinced them that the rest of the world at the least, doesn't care, but more likely doesn't even realize that they exist at all. And when the rest of the world is sending you that message, then it is easy to begin believing the possibility yourself, that you might not truly exist. You begin to feel as if the significance of your life on this earth has been eliminated by the poverty that you struggle in. When everyday, the majority of your time is spent walking miles just to retrieve some dirty water for your family to drink, then it is easy to believe that there is not a greater purpose for you. When hurricanes don't hesitate to destroy everything that matters in your life, then it seems possible that you, yourself, never mattered much.
A friend of mine who lived in northern Haiti for a short time recently told me a story about a gorgeous beach that was on the other side of a mountain from where he was. The beach was owned by a cruise company who would frequently take their passengers there, but they would always tell them that it was a "private island" because they didn't want to frighten the vacationers by telling them the truth that it was Haiti. They thought that they would find it much less beautiful if they knew they were basking in the sun on the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. These people were getting their tans and playing in the blue waves of the Caribbean with no clue that just on the other side of that mountain was over 8.5 million people living in unbearable poverty. For their own commercial benefit, this cruise company pretended that an entire nation did not exist.
But if there is one thing that I truly believe every human being on this planet truly deserves, it's existence. Every person deserves to know that their life has value beyond their own mind, their own flesh, and the tiny shack that they live in. So the goal of my artwork has become communicating the existence of those people who have become otherwise invisible through the world's ignorance. I intend to show that negligence cannot be justified when the people in my art are not all that different from you or me. There is beauty to be found in every fragment of the world and in the life of every person no matter who they are or where they are, as long as you are willing to open your eyes and acknowledge it. For Jona's sake, and so many others in this world like him who feel forgettable, I hope that my art inspires the viewer to recognize and forces them to remember.
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