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Wandering through “Kilti,” Arts Warehouse’s rich and flavorful new exhibition of mostly 20th century Haitian art, I was reminded of how infrequently the work of Caribbean or African artists is granted such scope and insight. Even when artists of color are exhibited locally, they usually fall within the prevailing North American and Western European paradigms. While not all of the contributors to “Kilti”—which takes its name from the French word for “culture”—would be considered “outsider artists,” their work invariably lands outside typical western gallery fare, and they offer a curated peek into cultural traditions far removed from those typically encountered in white-owned art spaces.
“Kilti” comprises selections from Dr. Jacques Bartoli’s vast collection of Haitian art, which he has been amassing since the early 1990s. Its arrival at Arts Warehouse comes a year after its presentation in Berlin. As with any collection, “Kilti” is less of a broad survey of a country’s artistic traditions and tendencies—although you can glean some of this—than a reflection of the passions and themes driving its collector. Voodoo beliefs, political commentary, tender scenes of peasant and village life, and a frank and de-sexualized approach to nudity are recurring hallmarks of “Kilti,” along with a bold, expressive embrace of color that radiates an unfettered joie de vivre.
Though sometimes skewed, the worlds presented in “Kilti” reflect a strong sense of place. Even the pieces that flirt with abstraction, such as paintings by Jacques Valbrun and Rosemarie Desruisseau, are grounded in the figurative, their realities blurred, smudged and rubbed.

Approximately a dozen sequined, pearl-encrusted Haitian voodoo flags, which provided the foundation for Bartoli’s collection, dazzle the eyes while bypassing our conventional critical faculties with their childlike directness and beguiling us with their mysterious and symbolic depictions, from knives to candles to snakes.

But I was most taken with the paintings, which may faintly echo certain western-art traditions but are mostly, and refreshingly, detached from them. A scene from Wilson Bigaud is as busy and lively as a Bosch painting but without the tumescence, offering observations of a village in its teeming throng, while Andre Normil’s “Fete Patronale” presents a similar snapshot of convivial community.

There are stranger things, too—like animals emerging from subtle openings in a human form in a painting by Therese Christine Laporte, and the heads of humans and animals conjoining in Amina Simeon’s “Tambour Mystique.” I’m not clued in to Haitian politics enough to fully grasp Laporte’s “Enigme Mystiquo-politique,” but its fascistic alarm bells toll clearly enough: In the painting, a vehicle carrying a “president a vie (president for life)” flag barrels down a city street, the “grill” of the presidential transport seeming to grin demonically.

Perhaps most captivating are the works that acknowledge beliefs about the thin veil between life and the hereafter that are more central to Haitian voodoo than most any popular western faith. Desruisseau’s “Reveries” is a dreamscape in a cornfield, in which goddesses and doves share space with symbols of death and renewal.

In my favorite piece in the exhibition, a selection from Laporte’s “Mythologie Vodou” series, the sickle-carrying figure of Death looms outside outside a house, along with a black cat. Inside, a woman—Death’s next claimant?—sits on her bed, as ghosts clutter around her, emerging from her many devices: her computer, her stereo, her smartphone. A clock on the wall surreally displays “who cares,” suggesting a reality outside of linear time, where the spirits roam—and very much inhabit our creature comforts. The painting accomplishes what much great art, regardless of its cultural milieu, seeks: It crystallizes the liminal.
“Kilti” runs through June 24 at Arts Warehouse, 313 N.E. Third St., Delray Beach. Admission is free, and hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Call 561/330-9614 or visit artswarehouse.org.