Jennica Drice explores Haitian migration through blue textile art

Overview:

Brooklyn-born Haitian artist Jennica Drice uses blue textile prints, family objects and migration memories in “Between Us,” an exhibit exploring Haitian diaspora life between Haiti and New York.

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — In artist Jennica Drice’s recent exhibit exploring her Haitian American upbringing, a living room photograph welcomes visitors with mementos that were once fixtures in her life in Brooklyn: Western Union money transfer receipts, a calling card pinned into blue-hued textile collages, a cyanotype print of the Brooklyn Bridge looking over the Coney Island Hospital — where Drice was born.

“It is my life living in a hyphenated place,” Drice said during the closing day of the exhibit. 

“The story of being home and not home,” she explained in an interview. “Although I was born in Brooklyn, there is a hyphenated life between Haiti and Brooklyn. Not totally Haitian. Not totally American.”

Whether that makes her feel ‘Haitian American’ is a topic Drice is exploring. 

“I’m learning to dissect ‘self’ on a cultural and personal level,” she explains. “So my work centers that while also exploring the intersection of how culture survives migration and how it’s passed down [or] reinterpreted.”

That feeling — between here and there, memory and distance — is at the center of “Between Us,” an immersive exhibit held last month at the Haul Gallery, where she is an artist in residence. From the initial living room photo onward, the installation itself moves like a migration story. She collates the myriad artifacts to tell a story of migration, memory and belonging, and turns to a single color, blue — because it is the color of water, “what separates us from our homeland,” she says — to unify the experience.  

Drice’s pieces trace both a personal and collective history as Haitian diasporic life entered full bloom in the 1970s through the 2000s. Everyday objects — such as gode emaye cups used in coffee rituals — along with quilted textile panels and archival documents reflect how many Haitian families sustain ties across borders. Included also is a soundscape from “Lè Ayisyen,” a Haitian Creole radio program that connected early transplants to Haiti and the everyday experience of Haitian families.

Drice infuses indigo and cyanotype print, giving the array of items a cohesive feel. Indigo produced in Haiti, she explained to attendees, once played a major role in the former colony’s economy, a fact she thinks should be acknowledged today.

“What I am doing is reclaiming the ownership of that history over that material, telling my own story through a medium my country produces but has never been fully credited for,” Drice said. 

Stepping into history, memories and lore

Inside the Park Slope gallery, the exhibit felt like stepping into pieces of a Haitian family archive.

In one corner, sat a small table many Haitian visitors instantly recognized. A transistor radio played Haitian music. Beside it were two enameled mugs, the white with blue rim gode emaye used for morning coffee that also carry spiritual meaning for Vodou practitioners. Nearby sat an image of the Virgin Mary and a bottle of Florida Water, another staple in Vodou ceremonies.

A replica of a typical Haitian living room is the centerpiece of the exhibit. A chair wrapped in protective plastic sat beneath a Haitian painting and a framed photograph of Drice’s grandmother. On the coffee table rested a copy of Haiti Observateur, the newspaper that connected generations of Haitians abroad to political and community news back home. Nearby stood a blue shipping barrel — a dwoum in Haitian Creole — the familiar container generations of Haitian families packed with rice, clothes, school supplies and household goods for relatives in Haiti.

Another collage layers handwritten letters, calling cards and a money transfer receipt across a shade of blue fabric. Drice’s experiences not only as a Brooklynite, but as a married woman, a mom and project manager have broadened her views of the cross-border connections that shaped her household.  Between managing timelines at work and school pickups at home, she moves through the same domestic rhythms her exhibition memorializes — the waiting in, tending to and holding of two places at once.

As the child of an agronomist father, her understanding of cultural inheritance is rooted in the land itself. It shapes how she thinks about what gets passed down across generations and what gets lost in the transition.

“A Western Union receipt is a love letter,” said Drice, whose family lived in Flatbush. “These are not just objects. They are evidence of what people did to sustain a life together back home.”

• A transistor radio played Haitian music on a small table with an image of the Virgin Mary and a bottle of Florida Water, a staple in Vodou ceremonies, sat on a small table at one corner during the “Between Us”’ exhibit on April 11. Photo by Darlie Gervais for The Haitian Times.
• “Between Us” features a replica of a Haitian living room that features a chair wrapped in protective plastic beneath a Haitian painting, a framed photo of the artist’s grandmother, and a copy of the Haiti Observateur newspaper sitting on the coffee table, recalling how generations of Haitians abroad stayed connected to news and life back home. Courtesy photo from the exhibit