Join HCX as we welcome Sacred Banners of Haitian Vodou exhibiting artist Mireille Delice. A renowned Haitian flag maker, Delice will share about her global career and distinct technique creating new methods in the vivid art of Haitian traditional beadwork. Moderated by exhibition curator Axelle Liautaud.

Sunday, March 9, 2025
3-6pm

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About The Exhibition

Sacred Banners of Haitian Vodou, on view at the HCX Gallery is curated from the personal collection of Axelle Liautaud beginning in the 1980s, featuring significant flag makers from that era to the present day.

Learn more about the significance of Vodou flags, their makers and the vibrant history of these spiritual objects in conversation with Sacred Banners of Haitian Vodou’s curator Axelle Liautaud.

More information about the Sacred Banners of Haitian Vodou exhibit here.

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Mireille Delice

Mireille Delice (also spelled Delismé) was born in 1965, in Haiti (Biography below adapted from Wikipedia and other sources).

Delisme’s career began in 1986, when taught sewing and beading techniques by her cousin, Myrlande Constant. Soon after, she began working alongside her cousin in Port-au-Prince at a factory embellishing wedding dresses for export. Following the closing of the factory in 1990 due to political and economic issues, Delisme recalls having a dream in which she was visited by the spirits. When relating the dream to her father, an oungan (vodou priest), he interpreted the message to be from the Vodou spirit or lwa Erzulie. Erzulie, the spirit of love, is represented in vodou tradition by a heart, which was the same design symbolized in Delisme’s dream. Using beads left over from her time at the factory, the heart symbol visualized in her dream became the sequin design for her first drapo (flag).

Delisme recollects having more than one dream in which spirits visited her. During the third dream, she was delivered the message that, “I did not have to work in the factory, but I could learn to work for myself and earn for my family.” In 1990, having lost her job at the factory in conjunction with the lwa messages, Delisme decided to begin her life as an independent artist at age 25. Delisme continued to master her needlework skills by creating more drapo, finding design inspiration from her dreams and Vodou symbols given to her by her father. Delisme’s beadwork incorporates vévé designs that represent traditional Vodou deities and are used to explain divinity and give clarity to life’s expressions and meanings. Her flags represent her spirituality and are used for guidance, wisdom, and healing. Her bright color combinations add to the mood and spirit of each piece.  Since becoming an independent artist, Delisme has built an atelier in Haiti. The workshop was constructed to more efficiently assemble the bead-work for her drapo designs. Delisme describes the envisioned designs to a paid artist to be drawn or traced for the drapo and once done, is passed on to be beaded by Delisme herself or one of the seven artists employed at the workshop.

In January 2010, Delisme’s hometown was at the epicenter of a massive earthquake. Delisme and her family were among those affected by the earthquakes destruction. “I felt I had to express the disaster in Haiti in my artwork.” 

In 2011, Delisme’s work Catastrophe du 12 Janvier, a Vodou flag created to depict the crumpled buildings and the bodies of the dead caused by the earthquake, was part of an exhibit at the Museum of International Folk Art titled “The Arts of Survival: Folk Expression in the Face of Natural Disaster.”  The same work was exhibited in Kathmandu, Nepal in Spring, 2022 as part of the  Kathmandu Triennale.  Delisme has displayed and sold her works at the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market for many years (2011, 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2024).

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Axelle Liautaud

Axelle Liautaud is a Haitian art historian and curator. She is also a designer who works with artists and craftsmen to create unique items. For more than 30 years, she has worked to promote Haitian art and crafts in Europe and the United States. Axelle started collecting Vodou Flags in the 1980s and was the first to introduce Haitian Flags to the international market. With Virgil Young, she organized a collection of beaded artwork in collaboration with great American artists such as Keith Haring, Alison Saar and others. She has collaborated with many museums on exhibitions of Haitian art—most notably, the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles for The Sacred Art of Vodou (1995) which traveled to major museums, including The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, The Museum of Natural History, NY, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Axelle has been the curator of exhibitions at the Museum of Naive Art in Paris (Halles St. Pierre) (1988), as well as the Organization of American States in Washington (1999), and the Bass Museum in Miami for the Allegories of Haitian Art exhibition, where the filmmaker Jonathan Demme’s collection was put on display (2006). 

Axelle has been a member of Le Centre d’Art’s Board of Directors since 1997 and became Acting President following the 2010 earthquake, the death of Francine Murat, and the collapse of the Centre’s building. After the earthquake, she led efforts to rescue the collections from the rubble, including 4,000 paintings, more than 1,000 sculptures, 500 works on paper, and the largest art and cultural archives in Haiti. In collaboration with the Smithsonian Haiti Cultural Recovery Project, the art and documents were preserved and eventually returned to the Centre d’Art. As president of the Centre, she organized the Piasa Art Auction in Paris in 2017 and curated the Jasmin Joseph show that opened in Port-au-Prince in 2016 which traveled to various museums in France. Axelle stepped down from her role as President at Le Centre d’Art in 2021.