Black Icons portrayed at union gallery
BY TEQUILA MINSKY
How does a Haiti-based painter
end up having an exhibition of
Black icons—including Harriet
Tubman, Obama, Malcolm X, Ossie
Davis and Ruby Dee, at 1199SEIU’s
Bread and Roses Gallery on West 43rd
Street.
In 2018, Richard Barbot presented
his portrait of Harry Belafonte to the
legendary singer during a tribute for his
91st birthday, propelling this artist onto
1199’s radar. Not long after, Barbot was
invited to exhibit at the Gallery for Black
History Month.
With a handful of paintings already
completed, it took Barbot about a year to
paint the American iconic figures and the
paintings from Haiti’s history included in
this exhibit.
Barbot works big—his portraits are
at least 4 feet by 3 feet, with his largest
work 10 feet, the middle painting of a
triptych entitled Window of Hopethat
stretches more than 22 feet and takes up
the whole far wall of the gallery.
To ensure the arrival of his work, the
artist hand carried his rolled-up paintings
in a custom-made bag onto the airplane,
and once in New York, stretched
them on frames. He even completed a
few paintings after taking temporary
residence in Brooklyn.
Curated by Leslie Williams, the exhibit
includes portraits of AOC-Alexandria
Ocasio Cortez, and Rita Valdivia, Bolivian
poet and leader in Bolivia’s Army of
National Liberation, who died in combat
after her 23rd birthday.
His portrait emphasizing Obama is
subtitled Path of Freedom and includes
imagery of Toussaint Louverture, Lincoln,
MLK and Nelson Mandela.
Martin Luther King earns his own
portrait where in the notes alongside Barbot
quotes the civil rights legend, “Our
lives begin to end the day we become
silent about things that matter.”
Barbot writes, “Despite the passing
of time, his words still carry the same
weight, intensity and resonate in our current
society.” And, reacting to the current
administration’s cruel policies toward the
children at the border, Barbot says, “In
the face of this violence, silence becomes
deafening.” Barbot incorporates both
words and images into his MLK portrait.
Haiti-themed paintings are exhibited
PHOTOS BY TEQUILA MINSKY
1199SEIU VP Gerard Cadet poses with the artist in front of the center
of his triptych Window of Hope.
Alongside this portrait of AOC,
the artist writes in his side notes:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently
has become the standard bearer
of the fight against the social
inequality that is always glaring
in our societies.
on the other half of the gallery. His portrait
of Sanite Belair is of the symbolic
heroine of Haiti’s independence, a lieutenant
with Louverture’s army that led
to the Haitian revolution.
In his Portrait of Francois Capois: The
New Revolution, the horse ridden by
Capois tramples the black code while a
Heroine of Haiti’s independence,
Sanite Belair, a lieutenant with
Louverture’s army that led to the
Haitian revolution.
diverse crowd accompanies him. They’re
armed with books and musical instruments
instead of war weapons because
“ignorance and division are enemies this
society must face,” Barbot writes. (In
1685, the King of France Louis XIV’s
Code Noir—a document comprising
60 articles— defined the conditions of
slavery in the French colonial empire,
activities permitted by “free Negroes,”
as well as that Jews could not reside in
the colonies. Capois is a leader of the
Haitian revolution.)
In a departure from Haiti, in his
Shadow of the Pasta young girl wipes
away words from a speech delivered by
French President Nicholas Sarkozy that
characterizes Africans as being outside
of history and progress. Barbot writes: To
claim that “Africans have not progressed
enough in the world” is to deny that
Europe systematically underdeveloped
Africa; colonization was brutal.
Richard Barbot was born in Port-au-
Prince, lived in Montreal since childhood,
drawing from a very early age.
He returned to Haiti, and then back
to Montreal to study art, subsequently
returning to Haiti. An accomplished bass
player, he also performs jazz in Haiti.
“When I paint, I like playing with
shapes and colors, as a starting point,”
he says. “Then like a jazz musician
improvising, I try to gradually achieve
a coherent image from these colored
shapes.” He embraces visual influences
from North America and the Caribbean,
both regions where he has lived.
Bread and Roses Gallery, the only labor
union gallery in the country, serves
the 1199SEIU members—healthcare
workers—and New York’s progressive
community. Moe Foner, VP of Local
1199, founded the Bread and Roses
Cultural Project in 1979.
Earlier exhibits of interest to working
people included work by well-known
artists like Alice Neel and Larry Rivers
to works by the workers themselves—immigrant
artists and international painters
and photographers who were concerned
with the lives of working people.
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