The Amazing Barbershop project is a documentary exploration and survey of Haitian tonsorial art, including an investigation of the material culture and sociology of barber-sign-painting in Haiti. It is comprised of photographs celebrating all manifestations of this popular graphic art form, from the urban to the rural and from the most naive expressions to a hyperreal domain of extraordinarily accomplished painters. Interviews with the artists responsible give socio-economic context to this still-thriving tradition of hand-painted signage. An image gallery is below. For more information, see the dedicated website for this project, which includes a section on commissioned paintings that aims to elevate the earnings and career sustainability of several barbershop artists.

As part of POTOPRENS, the spectacular survey of contemporary Port-au-Prince artistic production first presented by Pioneer Works in Brooklyn in the fall of 2018, I collaborated with artist Michel Lafleur on the Salon de Beauté Rogere, an operating barbershop named for Michel’s mother, Destin Marie Rogère, who passed in June of 2018. Michel was cruelly and capriciously denied a visa to come to see his own installation by U.S. immigration authorities, but we were able to ship his paintings-on-plywood to Brooklyn and integrate them into the structure on-site. Views of the barbershop in its Brooklyn incarnation are HERE. The show and barbershop traveled to MOCA in Miami from April to August of 2019. Further venues are planned for 2020.

As a visiting artist at the 2017 Ghetto Biennale I presented an exhibition and a symposium on the popular graphics of Port-au-Prince with artists Lucas GarryMichel Lafleur, Kenley Louis and Jean Valmé. Installation views and exhibition gallery HERE.

I can be heard discussing barbershop art in Haiti in an interview for Clocktower.org, HERE.

Cabinet Magazine issue #60 features an article I wrote about the decorative vernacular of the Haitian Barbershop and its relationship to recycled shipping and trucking containers.

In October 2016 Alva Mooses edited and published Correspondence between NYC and P-au-P, exploring artistic linkages between the two cities. I contributed a piece on this project, which you can read HERE.

(click on any image below to enter slideshow/lightbox)