Guyodo (Frantz Jacques)  b. 1973, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Guyodo was born Frantz Jacques on December 7, 1973 in a small house off the Gran Rue, the main commercial street of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The rest of his family has moved but he still lives and works in the same rooms where he was born and raised with his grandmother, his parents, 6 sisters and 4 brothers. He attended Lecole Primaire, Secondaire and Troisieme and also worked after school sanding and staining wooden tourist items as did many of the kids in the neighborhood. He began playing soccer very young and became good enough to play professionally which he did until age 25 when he finally gave it up to please his mother, who had never approved of his soccer career; She wanted him to be a mechanic, which in fact he turned out to be, as it takes a  high degree of manual dexterity and skill with hand tools to assemble the effigies that he imagines.

Guyodo exhibited his work for the first time at the Sent Kiltirel Afrika Amerika in Port-au-Prince in 1989.  He was a founding member of Atis Rezistans, a group of artists, former woodworkers and carvers, who began to collect the junk that clutters their industrial neighborhood and incorporate it into works of art, some of them monumental, using car and truck frames, which make social and political statements and frequently pay homage to the gods of Vodou. The sculptures are everywhere; groups of them line the narrow alleys and hang on the walls, spreading from the bulging ateliers of the artists to populate the block, a living museum in the ghetto, for people who do not normally frequent museums.

In 2006, curators from the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool came to Haiti, looking for an artist to create a large piece to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery. Guyodo was one of four artists who were chosen to collaborate. They built the Freedom Sculpture in Haiti and shipped it to the UK where it was shown in several cities before being permanently installed in Liverpool. Since then, the artists have travelled, together and separately, to Paris, London, Chicago, Bordeaux, Pittsburgh, Geneva, Edinburgh and other places.

In September 2018 Guyodo was one of the featured artists in  POTOPRENS:  The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince, a group exhibit of 25 artists at the Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY.  The exhibit continued to the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami in 2019.

In January 2021 Guyodo's work was featured prominently in the group show "Rèl" (Scream) at Le Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince, reviewed below in Le Nouvelliste:

Frantz Jacques, known as Guyodo, the Emperor of Painting and Sculpture

Posted on 2021-01-29 | The Nouvelliste
If the name Guyodo resounds so loudly, it is undoubtedly because of his success in the artistic world. Frantz Jacques is a leading figure in Haitian visual art of the contemporary period. As he likes to say, he represents “Haitian pride on the international scene”. However, other remarkable sides of the artist remain unexplored. The main street artist is an artist with a mentality of steel. He falls, he fights and gets up from his tragic leaps. It’s nearly 20 years of artistic production that went into disarray after his studio was burnt down last year, causing him pain and misfortune. A year later, although he has yet to recover his losses, he is screaming through his works at the "reel" exhibition. "A reel that is not a cry of distress but a cry of hope".

Guyodo is at the height of contemporary Haitian art. Quality and beauty in the artist juggle with fertility. He is one of the most prolific painters of the time, he is a veritable production machine. To prepare for the “Rèl” exhibition, he only needed two months, October and November, to create 21 paintings, including 12 of dimension 51 × 61, two of dimension 128 × 64, others of dimension 130 × 63, or 64 × 173 and others. "He worked like crazy," says Center Art Executive Director Jean Mathiot.
Born in 1973 in Port-au-Prince, Frantz Jacques practiced art from an early age. He sculpted wooden objects in workshops on the Grand Rue to sell them to tourists. At the invitation of Jean Hérard Céleur, he joined "Atis rezistans", a collective that brings together recycled plastic artists. Constantly motivated by the desire to go further, Frantz Jacques does not limit himself to recovering metal only, but everything that he considers usable. Some of his finest recoveries are the “pèpè” (second-hand clothes); he reuses them in the creation of many paintings. He likes to say on this subject: "Blan yo voye yo ban nou pou pa bon, mwen menm mwen pran yo m fè bèl tablo ak yo, m ekspoze yo nan mize lakay yo. (The whites sent them to us for bad, I also took them and made beautiful paintings with them, I exhibited them in their home museum.)"
In 2006, With Céleur, André Eugène and Mario Benjamin, he contributed to the construction of “Freedom culture”, a piece sculpted in commemoration of the 2000th year of the abolition of slavery, at the initiative of the curators of the International Museum. of slavery in Liverpool. Since then his career has taken a different turn; it begins to enjoy international recognition. Highly requested, he represents Haiti in London, New York, Milan, Bordeaux, Chicago, Geneva, Brooklyn, Edinburgh, Pittsburgh, Brussels.

However, the ordeal reveals another side of the artist. We are at the dawn of March 1, 2020, a fire whose origin is still unknown has spread to the main street, its habitat and its workshop. No less than 2,000 works, or nearly 20 years of artistic productions, went up in smoke. A real disaster for the native of the Grand Rue who knew a lot of economic problems. He tells Le Nouvelliste that he has just lost "most of his impressive collection," including works that have been exhibited outside the country, at the Grand Palais, for example.

Almost a year later, Guyodo has yet to reopen its doors. “I need $ 30,000 to rebuild and relocate my workshop. I don't have them yet. An artist like Guyodo struggles to collect $ 30,000, ”he complains. However, to think that this fatality would doom the artist's future is to misunderstand him. Frantz Jacques does not budge; the very day of the fire, he revealed to Le Nouvelliste his intention not to give up. "Depi menm yèswa a, gason m, mwen mete pants m nan tay mwen pou m rekòmanse travay (Since last night, my man, I put my pants on my waist to start working again.)". Words which, more than 11 months later, are manifested through his achievements. He is the most represented artist at the exhibition which has been held since January 14 by the Center d'Art at Maison Dufort. He occupies the ground floor alone, and shares the floor with other artists. His works at the "Rèl" exhibition express a cry of hope, of joy. "Se pa tout lè rél la se kri lamizè, dezespwa, rél la tou se yon kri jwa, yon kri espwa (It's not always when the cry is a cry of poverty, despair, the cry is also a cry of joy, a cry of hope)", he insists.

It is a happy Guyodo that we found this Thursday at Maison Dufort for live performances. He sang, paraded, painted a picture on the spot under the spell of an audience curious to see an artist who exudes an energy of hope and who shows great pride in his native land.

Exhibitions

Solo Shows

2009 Galerie Bourbon-Lally, Bourdon, Haiti 2005 Centre Culturel AFRICAMERICA, Port-au-Prince

Group Shows

2021  "REL" - Le Centre d'Art d'Haïti, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
2021  Barbara d'Antuono and the Haitian outsiders "Wandering spirits" - Galerie Claire Corcia, Marseille, France
2020  Indigo Arts Gallery, The Outsider Art Fair, New York , USA
2019  Haiti-Cuba Outsiders, Galerie Polysémie, Marseille, France, Outsider art III, Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris, AFRICA NOW !, Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris
2019 "PÒTOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince" - Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL, , April 23 – August 11, 2019
2018 "PÒTOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince" - Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY, September 7 - November 11, 2018
2018 Indigo Arts Gallery, The Outsider Art Fair, New York , USA
2017 Indigo Arts Gallery, The Outsider Art Fair, New York , USA
2017 "Art haïtien, de 1940 à nos jours", Le Centre d'Art d'Haïti, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
2017 Haïti, The New Outsiders, Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris
2011 Venice Biennial Agnes B , Royaume de ce Monde, Paris , France Galerie Bourbon-Lally, The Outsider Art Fair, New York , USA
2010 Biennale Internationale du Design de Liege , Belgium_Galerie Bourbon-Lally , ArteAmericas , Miami , USA _Galerie Bourbon- Lally , The Outsider Art Fair , New York, USA 2009 Galerie Bourbon-Lally, NFBAS, New York_
2009 Mythologies, Haunch of Venison, London _Kreyol Factory, Parc de la Villette, Paris
2008 Galerie Bourbon-Lally, The Outsider Art Fair , New York Galerie Bourbon-Lally, NFBAS, New York University of Bordeaux , Bordeaux , France MEG, Geneva, Switzerland Urban Alchemy, Galerie Macondo, Pittsburgh
2007 Fete de la Sculpture, Institut Francais d'Haiti, P-au-P, Haiti Vodou Riche, Colombia College, Chicago, USA
2006 4 th Forum Transculturel d'Art Contemporain, Musee du Pantheon National Haitien, P-au-P, Haiti Galerie Boubon Lally, Outsider Art Fair,
2006, New York Freedom Sculpture Launch, Musee d'Art Haitien, P-au-P, Haiti Freedom Sculpture,Museum of Slavery , Liverpool, UK The Sculptors of Grand Rue, The Foundry, London, UK
005 Fete de la Sculpture, Institut Francais d'Haiti, P-au-P, Haiti Outsiders Art Show, Galerie Bourbon Lally, New York, USA
2004 Lespri Endepandan, Discovering Haitian Sculpture, Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami, USA

Collections

Permanent Collection of the Frost Art Museum at Florida International University Museum of Slavery , Liverpool , UK (Collective piece , with Celeur, Eugene and Mario Benjamin)

(Information above courtesy of guyodo.net, Galerie Bourbon-Lally - Haiti, Galerie Macondo, Artsy and others).