About the Artist
Amina Simeon (1959 – 2000)
Amina Simeon was born in Jacmel, Haiti on March 10, 1959. She was one of the first artists working in the densely beaded style of drapo Vodou, or Vodou flag, pioneered by Myrlande Constant (b. 1968). Like Constant, Simeon had worked at a factory in Port-au-Prince which employed the fine skills (and low wages) of Haitian workers to make ornate beaded wedding dresses for the French market. They used an ornate French beading technique known as tambour to create dazzling surfaces of beads and sequins. Simeon was laid off from the factory in 1994, not long before it closed due to the harsh economic and political conditions of embargo-era Haiti. She apprenticed in Constant’s flag-making atelier for some time before forming her own studio. The quality of her work was exquisite, and her designs were innovative, embracing influences from painters such as Andre Pierre and Burton Chenet as well as the more traditional canon of lwa and saints. The flags were sought after by collectors and visitors in the brief, hopeful period following Aristide’s return to power, and her studio grew to as many as twelve people at its peak. Amina Simeon died in 2000 of what was most likely a ruptured appendix. (biographical information courtesy of Nancy Josephson in her book, Spirits in Sequins: Vodou Flags of Haiti.
