✨Good Fortune - Bon Chans✨
Netherlands / 2023 / spacial installation / videos, photographs in light boxes and on banner, objects / variable dimensions

The installation ✨Good Fortune - Bon Chans✨ is about the sale of prescription medicines by street vendors in Port-au-Prince and other cities in Haïti. These people are called 'machann grenn', Haitian Creole for 'pill sellers'.

Medicines are unfortunately exposed to sun and heat every day, boxes and leaflets can be missing, and some products are expired. At the same time, the phenomenon is a blessing because prices at the 'machann grenn' are way lower compared to those at formal pharmacies. Also one can buy exactly the amount of pills needed: this makes a purchase less expensive. Although the practice is illegal vendors are brave and work without fear of the police and earn an affordable living every day. 

In 2009 I spent three weeks in Port-au-Prince for the video project City One Minutes. Next to curating and filming shorts - with a.o. Atis Rezistans - I collected photos, sounds, objects and stories: ... 14 years later ingredients for the location-specific installation ✨Good Fortune - Bon Chans✨ at BIG ART. The 2023 edition of the art fair took place in the former main jail in Amsterdam. I chose the stripped restroom area for the installation, a room that resembled a house in progress in Port-au-Prince. The show was on from September 28 till October 1, 2023.

 ✨Good Fortune - Bon Chans✨ also presented a longer video with the 'machann grenn' Ben, filmed by artist Reginald Sénatus in 2023. Before BIG ART opened on September 28, Haitian-born artist Fré Calm, contemporary ‘vodou’ practitioner, blessed me and my work with a cleansing ritual for  ✨Good Fortune - Bon Chans✨.

Merci: Géraldine Le Carret (research and advice), Reginald Sénatus (the 2023 video), Ben (the pill seller in the main video), Fré Calm (performance), Caja Stenzler (intern/assistant).