UNE SOIRÉE CHEZ RONALD
Another teacher at the Ciné Institute happens to be one of Haiti’s most important artists, Ronald Mevs (mentioned in 2e Semaine). He teaches a class in Ethics which, along with another class in Courage taught by a former student, provides students with moral and inspirational strength to pursue their film studies. It’s easy to forget that none of the Haitian population was spared the devastation and accompanying trauma of the 2010 earthquake and that students need emotional and psychological context to their development. Ronald is the ideal role model and inspiration to achieve this end. I asked him to be a guest teacher for my Thursday morning Aesthetics class and he kindly invited my three colleagues and me to his house on Wednesday evening to discuss what he might present. His place at the foot of the mountain is accessible only by a four-wheel vehicle or by walking – along narrow paths, through fields and back yards, crossing impossible country roads and scaling steep grades which is what we did to get there.
On their sprawling terrace, over avocado, fish and beans resembling chestnuts we sipped Argentinean wine (oddly one of the few wines available here) and listened to Ronald and wife, Consuela, describe the richesse of their life at the foot of the mountain in Haiti. Their two-storey mediterranean-style house with its hues of mustard, rust and cinnamon made a painter’s landscape amidst the lush Babylonian-like gardens that was their surrounding property. Ronald’s workshop, itself a two-storey affair with large windows and adjoining terrace would make any artist green with envy. Defying categorisation – with a mix of the primitive and modern, at times figurative, at times abstract, across drawing, painting, sculpture and industrial design, Ronald’s work is collected globally – and having had numerous exhibitions in Paris, his place in the pantheon of world artists is secure. When Ronald made his guest appearance in my Aesthetics course the following day, the class was held in thrawl as he described the process of how the artisanal in Haiti transitioned into the artistic. When his discourse touched on the paradox of beauty and grotesque in the depictions of monsters and mythological creatures in art, the class erupted into an animated discussion. That’s how it ended.
