Dr. Grete Vidal
Dr. Grete Viddal received her MA in Anthropology and her PhD in African and African American Studies from Harvard University. A fellowship at the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University brought her to New Orleans in 2015. Her book manuscript “Vodú Chic: Cuba’s Haitian Heritage, the Folkloric Imaginary, and the State” is under agreement for publication with the University of Mississippi Press. Vodú Chic is based on fieldwork she conducted while living in eastern Cuba from 2008-2010 and nineteen years of traveling to both Cuba and Haiti. The book examines how haitiano-cubanos, once Cuba’s most marginal migrants, utilize emerging heritage conservation projects and the tourist industry to assert their voices and achieve new visibility through links with cultural institutes, music promoters, anthropologists, and tourism. She looks at how dance, music, and rituals of Vodú are re-imagined for the public
stage in unexpected ways. Viddal’s new research is focused on practitioners of Caribbean religion in the United States. She built ties to Haitian religious societies in the Northeast and is continuing her work with practitioners in New Orleans. Viddal has published in the New West Indian Guide, the Journal of Haitian Studies, Arr: a Norwegian journal of intellectual history, ReVista: the Harvard Review of Latin America, contributed to the edited volume Making Caribbean Dance, and also writes for local magazines, including an in-depth look at how one Mardi Gras Indian chief sourced the ingredients for his suit in County Roads.
They will be presenting at the symposium at New Orleans National Vodou Day on the topic of :
The Vevé of Afá, Fondation Dantor des Enfants, and Atis Rezistans: Vodou-inspired Artists Empowering Communities in Cuba and Haiti
Their Presentation
This presentation shares the stories of three visionary arts communities, all inspired by Vodou.The Vevé of Afá, an artist’s colony and ecological shrine, is located near the town of Palma Soriano in Santiago province in eastern Cuba. To be situated on fallow land at a confluence of two rivers, the project proposal envisions community gardens, studios, ritual space, and a massive vevé fashioned from vegetation planted in designs that can be recognized from above. This eco-art project has been listed in the UN Habitat Best Practices Database. The Fondation Dantor des Enfants is a medical and social services clinic inside a beached ship. Founded by Vodou priest Augustin St Clou, the project is located outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti and receives support from international partners. Inspired by the Gede, the badass lords of the cemetery who rule both death and sex, the artists of the Atis Rezistans collective create works from discards and scrap found in open-air markets and auto salvage businesses in one of Port-au-Prince’s densest neighborhoods. None went to art school. Today these “artists of resistance” exhibit in museums in North America and Europe, host a “Ghetto Biennale,” and run a mentoring program for local youth. Together, these artists collectives embody the force of twenty-first century Vodou, as they build new communities in precarious environs.