BROOKLYN, N.Y. — In artist Jennica Drice’s current exhibit exploring her Haitian American upbringing, a front room {photograph} welcomes guests with mementos that had been as soon as fixtures in her life in Brooklyn: Western Union cash switch receipts, a calling card pinned into blue-hued textile collages, a cyanotype print of the Brooklyn Bridge trying over the Coney Island Hospital — the place Drice was born.
“It’s my life dwelling in a hyphenated place,” Drice mentioned through the closing day of the exhibit.
“The story of being house and never house,” she defined in an interview. “Though I used to be born in Brooklyn, there’s a hyphenated life between Haiti and Brooklyn. Not completely Haitian. Not completely American.”
Whether or not that makes her really feel ‘Haitian American’ is a subject Drice is exploring.
“I’m studying to dissect ‘self’ on a cultural and private degree,” she explains. “So my work facilities that whereas additionally exploring the intersection of how tradition survives migration and the way it’s handed down [or] reinterpreted.”
That feeling — between right here and there, reminiscence and distance — is on the heart of “Between Us,” an immersive exhibit held final month on the Haul Gallery, the place she is an artist in residence. From the preliminary front room photograph onward, the set up itself strikes like a migration story. She collates the myriad artifacts to inform a narrative of migration, reminiscence and belonging, and turns to a single colour, blue — as a result of it’s the colour of water, “what separates us from our homeland,” she says — to unify the expertise.
Drice’s items hint each a private and collective historical past as Haitian diasporic life entered full bloom within the Nineteen Seventies by means of the 2000s. On a regular basis objects — equivalent to gode emaye cups utilized in espresso rituals — together with quilted textile panels and archival paperwork replicate what number of Haitian households maintain ties throughout borders. Included is also a soundscape from “Lè Ayisyen,” a Haitian Creole radio program that related early transplants to Haiti and the on a regular basis expertise of Haitian households.
Drice infuses indigo and cyanotype print, giving the array of things a cohesive really feel. Indigo produced in Haiti, she defined to attendees, as soon as performed a serious position within the former colony’s financial system, a truth she thinks needs to be acknowledged as we speak.
“What I’m doing is reclaiming the possession of that historical past over that materials, telling my very own story by means of a medium my nation produces however has by no means been absolutely credited for,” Drice mentioned.
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Artist Jennica Drice. Picture by Steven Baboun
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Artist Jennica Drice. Picture by Steven Baboun
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Artist Jennica Drice explains her alternative of objects, pictures and household mementos included in “Between Us,” her present at Haul Gallery in Brooklyn on April 11, 2026. Picture by Darlie Gervais / The Haitian Instances
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A view of objects pinned onto blue-hued textile prints in “Between Us,” which showcased Haitian American artist Jennica Drice’s work on the Haul Gallery in Brooklyn in April. Picture courtesy of the exhibition.
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Gallery guests take within the blue-hued textile prints of “Between Us,” which showcased Haitian American artist Jennica Drice’s work on the Haul Gallery in Brooklyn in April. Picture courtesy of the exhibition.
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Gallery guests take within the blue-hued textile prints of “Between Us,” which showcased Haitian American artist Jennica Drice’s work on the Haul Gallery in Brooklyn in April. Picture courtesy of the exhibition.
Entering into historical past, reminiscences and lore
Contained in the Park Slope gallery, the exhibit felt like entering into items of a Haitian household archive.
In a single nook, sat a small desk many Haitian guests immediately acknowledged. A transistor radio performed Haitian music. Beside it had been two enameled mugs, the white with blue rim gode emaye used for morning espresso that additionally carry religious that means for Vodou practitioners. Close by sat a picture of the Virgin Mary and a bottle of Florida Water, one other staple in Vodou ceremonies.
A duplicate of a typical Haitian front room is the centerpiece of the exhibit. A chair wrapped in protecting plastic sat beneath a Haitian portray and a framed {photograph} of Drice’s grandmother. On the espresso desk rested a duplicate of Haiti Observateur, the newspaper that related generations of Haitians overseas to political and neighborhood information again house. Close by stood a blue delivery barrel — a dwoum in Haitian Creole — the acquainted container generations of Haitian households filled with rice, garments, faculty provides and family items for family members in Haiti.
One other collage layers handwritten letters, calling playing cards and a cash switch receipt throughout a shade of blue cloth. Drice’s experiences not solely as a Brooklynite, however as a married girl, a mother and challenge supervisor have broadened her views of the cross-border connections that formed her family. Between managing timelines at work and faculty pickups at house, she strikes by means of the identical home rhythms her exhibition memorializes — the ready in, tending to and holding of two locations without delay.
Because the baby of an agronomist father, her understanding of cultural inheritance is rooted within the land itself. It shapes how she thinks about what will get handed down throughout generations and what will get misplaced within the transition.
“A Western Union receipt is a love letter,” mentioned Drice, whose household lived in Flatbush. “These should not simply objects. They’re proof of what individuals did to maintain a life collectively again house.”
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A transistor radio performed Haitian music on a small desk with a picture of the Virgin Mary and a bottle of Florida Water, a staple in Vodou ceremonies, sat on a small desk at one nook through the “Between Us”’ exhibit on April 11. Picture by Darlie Gervais for The Haitian Instances.
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“Between Us” contains a duplicate of a Haitian front room that contains a chair wrapped in protecting plastic beneath a Haitian portray, a framed photograph of the artist’s grandmother, and a duplicate of the Haiti Observateur newspaper sitting on the espresso desk, recalling how generations of Haitians overseas stayed related to information and life again house. Courtesy photograph from the exhibit
Making artwork private — and common
For a lot of guests of the present, the objects felt private. A number of recalled reminiscences lengthy saved away that introduced them proper again into their childhood houses.
“My favourite piece is the one with the Haiti Observateur newspaper as a result of it jogs my memory of my very own front room rising up,” mentioned attendee Annie Grimes. “Seeing all of the blue introduced again reminiscences for Haitians who grew up there.”
Maureen Boyer, who was born in Haiti and raised in Brooklyn, paused in entrance of a bit layered with lace and a wedding license certificates stamped as an official-looking Haitian authorities doc.
“It jogs my memory of the desk covers my household used to place out for Sunday dinner,” Boyer mentioned. “The center half additionally jogged my memory of my very own beginning certificates.”
Customer Grasseline Jean-Philippe described the exhibit as a reminder of the connection many Haitians overseas nonetheless really feel to house.
“Whenever you’re gone, you are feeling related over again,” Jean-Philippe mentioned. “Figuring out that you just belong to a land and a individuals who present resilience, exhausting work and pleasure.”
Drice additionally led a cyanotype workshop wherein individuals created prints utilizing light-sensitive cloth and private objects from their very own archives.
“I wished individuals to take possession of their very own archives,” Drice mentioned. “A whole lot of diaspora life is about loss — issues misplaced, locations you can’t return to, individuals you can’t attain. This course of is the alternative of that.”
Her analysis of Haiti’s textile traditions and the gaps left within the visible historical past of Haitian materials tradition are shaping the following challenge in improvement: a textile interpretation of Haitian conventional rhythm.
“A part of what I’m doing is asking: What traces stay, and what might be reconstructed or reimagined?”
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