It is Sunday and Sankt Kunigundis Church is packed to the rafters. In place of pews, the nave is populated with sculptures. Made from discarded objects — metal, glass, hubcaps, cables, pharmaceutical refuse, as well as skulls, bones, and electronic debris such as motherboards and televisions — the totemic figures are an occult mix of Creole culture and Vodou, adopting a material language of survivalist imagination and breathing new life into societal detritus. Perfectly life-sized, their silhouettes mirror the visitors’ bodies so much that at a glance one cannot distinguish humans from art. Skeletal Marys swathed in cyan and ash tule roost at the altar on a cherry red carpet, adorned in leis, clutching broken, limbless babies. Their prismatic presence and dystopian charm stands out against the sallow limestone tiles and demure, pint-sized marble statuettes of saints and priests behind them that are fixtures of the church.

In the sacristy, the sermon is being broadcast via Tele Geto, a guerrilla media outlet created by the Ti Moun, junior members of Haitian artist collective Atis Rezistans (Artists of the Resistance), from the Grand Rue neighborhood in Port au Prince. “Power to our talents!” a young man proclaims, grinning into the camera. He discusses the need to mobilize his community – for many of whom hope is lost. He shares the desire to make something, even when you have nothing. The area has seen disaster. Behind him are flattened houses, mountains of rubble, a little girl on a bicycle, and children playing amongst the debris. On the walls he presents the etched names of those perished in the 2010 and 2021 earthquakes. Catering to a lack of on-the-ground news coverage after the devastation, the newscast documents life in the ghetto and the activities of the Ghetto Biennale, a grassroots, cross-cultural art exhibition started by the collective in 2009.

Even before the earthquakes, Haiti’s century-long bout for independence from France left the country drenched in a wayward, post-colonial state of becoming. On the prestressed concrete walls of the church hangs the Black President Series, by Edouard Duval-Carrié, emulating faces of black leadership through portraits engraved in mirrors, enabling the visitor to see themselves within the image. This collection will be exhibited in Johannesburg, South Africa, demonstrating an alliance between the first Black Republic with the most recent. The savoy blue background references the exhibition site, the National Gallery, and its Dutch colonial architecture, emphasizing the slow emergence from European rule, its inherent barbarity, inextricability from a pioneer past, and the painful negotiation between global hegemony and autonomous existence. “I love my little country,” the man adds. 

Working with very little, the Atis have developed a commendable framework of sustainability. They are exceptionally resourceful and enterprising. Early incarnations of Tele Geto utilized a stick and a plastic bottle, until eventually art writer and advocate John Cussans provided the team with a basic microphone and a camera, encouraging them to continue filming. Distribution has also helped to transform an unfavorable portrayal of Haiti in the media and reaffirm the area to outsiders as a place rich in culture and heritage that merits cultivation and celebration. The vestiges of post-industrial waste echo not only a collapsed economy but also the pervasive influence of commerce, which needs tourism and international relevance to keep step. However, whereas ruins are often romanticized, ghettos are scorned.

Yet, it is not a Biennale of Ruins, because that would infer finality to the wreckage. The Ghetto Biennale is buoyant and has revived creative vitality in the neighborhood, focussing on community-oriented production and the combating of social injustices through artistic reformation. Founded in the late 1990s by sculptors André Eugène and Jean Herald, Atis Rezistans have brought global exposure to a resolute creative population whose access to formal arts training has been left bereft as the impoverished area struggles to maintain basic living conditions, where broken roads are often the only places left to sleep.

The installation continues in the garden. A towering figure, Papa Legba, by Eugène, Evel Romain, and Wilerme Tegenis, greets visitors like a tree. Made from a car chassis, chains, and recycled metal, Legba is a Vodou spirit acting as an intermediary between the living and the dead. He is syncretized with Saint Peter, Saint Lazarus, and Saint Anthony. Other components include Don’t Move Again by Laura Heyman, a photo installation of portraits of the the district’s residents; from politicians to friends, artists, vendors, and NGO staff. Parked next to the church is a typical pharmacy trailer. These are the main source of medicine for many Haitians. The trailer’s prime product is magical edible mud cakes, or “bon bon tè majik,” made from clay, sugar, baking powder, and eggs. The mud cakes are eaten as a dietary supplement, especially during pregnancy, due to their high mineral content. Alongside the installation, Lafleur & Bogaert will make cakes for visitors with mud from the Großalmerode clay pit just outside Kassel. The magic cakes can be eaten or saved as artworks.

Selection of Kunigundis as the venue has caused dismay amongst a handful of conservative Catholic residents despite the diocese of Fulda’s intentions for the installation to bring cultures together. The diocese has held firm that, notwithstanding its awareness of a few residents having been provoked by the nature of the content, the “pictorial way of dealing with death has some direct parallels to the Catholic, baroque tradition.” They propose the opportunity for feelings of abjection to be evaluated as intolerance for what they describe as a cultural difference, affirming that Caribbean motifs of death are different from those in Europe, and such encounters should be embraced. Vodou, though sometimes perceived by the West as negative, is an important precipitation of Haiti’s quest for autonomy as well as a connection to its ancestors. What’s more, the artists have maintained constant cooperation with Bishop Dr. Michael Gerber and Pastor Martin Gies, who conceded that the majority of reactions have actually been positive. Besides, what is art if not a confrontation, an encounter that rattles the balance? By upsetting the apple cart, Atis Rezistans have only consecrated their capacity as artists to bend perception, expand the boundaries of what is comfortable, and uncover the grace of the ghetto.