On the campaign trail in 2024, then presidential candidate Donald Trump spouted dangerous, false rhetoric about Haitian migrants in Ohio. Lunise Cerin, a Haitian-American and co-creator of Miwa, a new experiential exhibit in North Philly, said that reality drove home the need to share and regain control of the cultural narrative.
“Anti-Haitian sentiment was actually like a talking point of the last presidential election” Cerin said. “So I think it’s important for us to also speak for ourselves and offer more nuanced depictions of what it is to be Haitian, understanding and celebration of our culture, of our tradition, of our heritage.”
Miwa — Haitian Creole for “mirror” — features documentary footage from Lunise and a concert from her sister Talie Cerin, combined to make a cross-media experience that explores Haitian heritage and legacy. The exhibit opened Thursday night at the Icebox Project Space in Olde Kensington and will run, with one show a night, through Saturday.
The project began when Talie realized the concert she was creating had similar thematic elements to Lunise’s documentary. For the past couple years, Talie has been following a few women in Haiti and some Haitian-American women in Philadelphia, “exploring heritage and practices of ritual.”
“I wanted to use my camera to explore those through lines and to say, actually it’s the same people,” Lunise said. ”Yes we’re maybe in a different language, yes we’re maybe in a different context, but it’s one people.”
As her sister was working on the documentary, Talie says she wanted to create a concert where she arranged and composed traditional and new Haitian folk songs, making a statement about “the old, what we bring with us when we migrate, and the new things we make with them.”
“I thought about my sister’s documentary, and I was like, Wait, this is actually kind of the same thing,” Talie said. “You know, we are talking about heritage and what’s old and what’s new, what can be learned along the way.”
The two projects came together to form Miwa. Lunise’s documentary is broken down into five themes — identity, community, land, celebration and spirit — and projected in rooms throughout the gallery. The final installation in the exhibit is Talie’s concert.
Lunise said that over time, while working on the exhibit, it became clear to her that the dialogue they are creating is not just with themselves, with their community, but for the entire world. The filmmaker explained that she is speaking for people who have been misrepresented their entire existence.
“Sharing across the world, not just with the Haitian diaspora but with anybody who’s interested in learning what it actually is to be Haitian, and what the joy and the pride of that is,” Lunise said. “Just so that we can own our own narratives and we can stand in our own power.”
She emphasized that although the work comes from a place of love and celebration of her people, it will always have a “political edge” to it. According to Lunise, the reality of being a Haitian storyteller is that you are inherently political.
When President Trump began cancelling National Endowment for the Arts grants in May, Miwa was affected, losing the funding the production had been awarded. Marla Burkholder, artistic director at Journey Arts, said that this is a “visceral” example of the national politics at play today.
“These are the voices that those actions are trying to close down,” said Burkholder, describing the efforts of the Trump administration to silence minority voices. “It hasn’t been successful.”
Tickets are available for the Friday and Saturday night shows. Both events will open at 7 p.m., with the concert starting an hour later.
The post ‘Miwa’ exhibit opens in Olde Kensington, reflecting Haitian pride and pain appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY.
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