Sénèque Obin – part of a family of artists that included his older brother Philomé, nephews Antoine and Telemaque, and son Othon – was in his fifties when he began painting and joined Port-au-Prince’s Centre d’Art in 1948. Obin’s practice as a painter and as an art activist offers a rich point of view from which to understand the arts in the Americas in the mid- twentieth century. His work exposes the contradictions of the modernisation process, challenging labels like “self- taught”, “naive”, and “primitive” often applied to artists of colour, like himself, which have prejudicially obscured the understanding of their complex works. Through myriad themes, motifs, and iconographies, Obin visually articulated diverse aspects of Haitian culture, such as street markets, Carnival, and spiritual syncretism, as well as the political dynamics of Haiti. Marché Clugny (1966) depicts a theme to which Obin would return several times: he places the iron market built in 1890 at the centre of social life in Cap-Haitien. With its precise lines, bold colours, and multiple narratives, the painting alludes to commerce, extraction, and the transformation of natural resources, evoked both in the commodities offered in the market and by the surrounding mountainous landscape in the background.
This is the first time the work of Sénèque Obin is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Rodrigo Moura
