Along with creating her own spirited abstract paintings, artist and curator Yvena Despagne showcases work by emerging and mid-career artists from Haiti and Brooklyn as co-founder of Arts x Ayiti and the recently appointed curator-in-residence of Arts Gowanus.
“As an artist you never do not have anything to do,” Despagne said at her Gowanus studio this week. “Even if I’m on one project, I can’t sit still. I’m on this one project but I’m planning five more.”
Discovering Art
The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Despagne was born and raised in Harlem, moving to Brooklyn in her teens and graduating from New Utrecht High School in Bensonhurst. She studied psychology at Brooklyn College before taking a position as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home to see if the medical field was a good fit for her. It wasn’t.
“I started catching myself hiding in empty rooms on my lunch break or whenever I had a moment, and researching art stuff,” she recalled. “I would study people’s artwork, read about becoming an artist or about artists’ stories. The more I was doing that, the less I wanted to be at the nursing home.”
“Going back [to college] was a challenge for me because at that point I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself,” Despagne added. “I was tired of taking classes and being unsure of my direction. That happened in the course of being married too.” At 25 Despagne married a Jehovah’s Witness whose religious beliefs she says “restricted me as an individual and didn’t allow me the opportunity to get to really know myself or even discover the fact that I liked art as much as I did.”
The couple separated in 2015 after five years. “Then the divorce happened and I started to get depressed,” she said, noting that she’d struggled with depression when she was younger. Searching for a distraction, Despagne found an instructional painting video on You Tube. “That was the first time that I stopped thinking about everything and was just focused on what [the artist] was doing,” she recalled. Inspired, she went out and bought art supplies and recreated what she saw in the tutorial. “I felt so good painting,” she said. “My issues were not an issue and I was able to block everything else out and think about myself…. Art in that sense, when you have that solitude, forces you to think about life, think about everything, or maybe not think about anything at all. Just focus on what you’re doing.”
She discovered her creative calling, and with the support of her new husband, Richard Rameau, decided to leave her position at the nursing home. “I left a good-paying job to barely making ends meet, but pursuing the art,” she said.
Rameau convinced Despagne to start an Instagram page in 2016 to share her artwork online. Within the first year of devoting herself full-time to her art, Despagne’s Instagram page caught the attention of Shirley Dorsainvil, the founder of Haitians Who Blog. She invited Despagne to exhibit and discuss her work at an event in Florida.
Another boost of confidence happened in 2019 when her painting Belle Machan’n was one of 11 works selected by the Flatbush Avenue BID for a street banner art campaign. The winning works were printed on to banners and prominently displayed along Flatbush Avenue between Cortelyou Road and Parkside Avenue in Brooklyn. “That was a big accomplishment for me because I almost didn’t enter,” Despagne noted with a laugh. The ethereal scene, featuring a “beautiful market lady” dressed in white and carrying a basket on her head, appeared to Despagne in a dream. “I woke up and was like I have to paint this now,” she remembers. “When I painted it, I was thinking about all the moms—about my mom and grandmother, my aunt, and all the woman that work hard to feed and provide for their families in hopes that they’ll have better opportunities or a better future than they did.”
Her 2018 series, Little Wonder, features an enchanting menagerie of tiny creatures including a bumble bee, butterfly, and hummingbird. A friend inspired the initial piece, Ladybug. “One ladybug had me thinking about all the other little creatures that we don’t really think about until we see them…. Regardless of how small we are, we still all have a reason and a purpose for being on earth,” she explained.
Anger was the impetus behind Despagne’s Monsters series. The project started with two works on paper in 2019. “I was so upset about so many things. It was a point in my life where I felt like I was facing a wall and didn’t know where else to go,” she said. “I just started drawing these random shapes and…suddenly they looked like parts of a body to me. I wrote the words ‘tongue,’ ‘teeth,’ and ‘eyes’ on them.” She set these two drawings aside for a few months until the pandemic hit and she felt compelled to revisit them and make more. “I just couldn’t stop creating these monsters. I was thinking of politics, the government. It’s just annoying how people feel a sense of having control over other people’s lives and just like that [snaps fingers] you can destroy it or take everything away,” she said.
Always Looking for Trouble features searching eyes “constantly looking for the next thing to gossip about” and an elongated pink tongue. “The tongue is so long because gossipers just have so much to say all the time,” she explains.
Four lashing tongues, four sets of teeth, and a single pair of eyes intermingle on a deep blue backdrop in Gang. “Usually in a gang, whether it’s a government, a school setting, or an actual gang in the streets, there’s always one leader of the pack. That’s why there is only one set of eyes,” Despagne notes. “It only takes that one person to see or say something to make everybody else follow.”
Another Creative Path
Despagne landed her first arts-related job in 2018 at sk.ArtSpace in East New York. After submitting her artwork and speaking with the venue owners, they recognized her drive and took her on as a gallery assistant. After three months, they gave her the opportunity to curate an exhibit on her own. The theme of Despagne’s inaugural curatorial project I Was Created to Create acknowledged “all artists who, although they do other things in their lives, can’t deny at the end of the day that they are an artist first,” she said. Featuring painting, photography, sculpture, and film, the exhibit went over so well that she was asked to curate two more group shows at the space in 2019.
Despagne soon found another position assisting Aaron Simms, the owner of Brooklyn Arts Fellowship (BAF) gallery in Greenwood Heights. She curated the exhibit currently on view at the gallery, Esansyèl [Essential], featuring paintings by Haitian-American artist Phaidra Sterlin.
Concurrent with her positions at galleries, Despagne branched out by curating artwork for local cafés, starting with Lakou Café in Crown Heights where she presented work by new artists every month. Her work at Lakou opened the door to curating gigs at several other cafés and caught the eye of the Ghost Gallery owner who enlisted her to curate three shows at his Brooklyn gallery. Despagne was even in talks to curate a show for Ghost Gallery’s LA location, but those plans had to be put on hold. “The pandemic hit and everything shut down,” she said. “Socializing is out of the picture. What am I supposed to do as an artist and as a curator? How does this work now?” she questioned.
An upcoming trip to Haiti also had to be canceled due to the pandemic. The producers of Ayiti: The Awakening recruited Despagne to organize screenings of their documentary in Haiti. “[The film] talks about how corrupted everything was after the [2010] earthquake and how the funds that were supposed to go to the Haitian people in the country to help restore it—never got there,” she explains of the film. Not easily discouraged, Despagne will host a screening of Ayiti: The Awakening in Brooklyn at BAF gallery on December 17.
While in-person events may pose problems amid the pandemic, Despagne’s online project, Art x Ayiti, continues to flourish. The platform highlights and promotes contemporary visual artists of Haitian descent. Since taking over the project from co-founder Samantha Nader, Despagne has been focused on enhancing the user experience by hosting artist talks and offering art business tips. “I feel like it’s serving its purpose, inspiring and motivating people and showing that as an artist you can make it, you just have to figure out what you’re doing.”
The ever-busy Despagne joined Arts Gowanus in September as a curator-in-residence. She’s already helped the group organize its annual fundraiser in September and collaborated on the successful Atlantic Avenue Art Walk in October. The walk featured artwork by dozens of Brooklyn artists displayed in 65 storefronts along 1.5-miles for a socially-distanced alternative to a yearly open studios event. Despagne is currently working on putting together a virtual show for the organization. “The Arts Gowanus community is very open and welcoming,” Despagne says of her new role. “I’m really excited about what else we’ll be able to work on together.”
A tenacious ambition and work ethic drive Despagne toward her creative goals. “I’m happy that I push myself. Fear comes hand in hand with this career and I’ve been told countless times if you’re not uncomfortable then you’re not really doing much. I’ve constantly been pushing myself to maintain in every uncomfortable situation because I know once I get through that, it’s prepares me for whatever else is out there for me,” she said. “I’m always striving for the next big thing.”
Visit yvenadespagneart.com to learn more about the artist and message her on Instagram if you’d like to schedule a studio visit.
Check out her programming at BAF Gallery—Phaidra Sterlin: Esansyèl [Essential] on view through December 20 and a screening of Ayiti: The Awakening on December 17 at 6pm.
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