?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
Constant, Myrlande (b. 1968) Bousou, Drapo Vodou, Haitian Vodou Banner.
Striped cotton fabric substrate intricately worked with multi-color glass beading with pearl edge mounted on a frame of yellow fabric; depicting the horned face of Bossu surrounded by swirling geometric designs, lettered BOUSOU in pink beads at top and bottom, with the artist's last name in the bottom left; 20 x 17 1/2 in.
Constant became a master beader working in a wedding dress factory in Haiti. She employs tambour beading, a French technique in which a continuous chain stitch conveys long unbroken lines of beads in the design. "In her works, Constant draws on the back of stretched fabric onto wood while the beading process, what would become the front of the flag, is being formed on the reverse side. Myrlande works through intuition, as she doesn't see the finished work until the backside has been completed. An artwork that resembles a voudou flag that isn't seen until it is completed becomes an object worked on from the threshold of the visible. This is a symbol that signifies dualities, syncretism, a belief system, a religion, and a stand-in for those notions, all of which are developed, somehow, almost blindly." (Quoted from https://www.myrlandeconstant.com/about, a biographical sketch and description of Constant's work by Diego Singh.)
The subject of this flag, also known as Bossou, is a mythological deity in Haitian Vodou, he is a male bull spirit with horns and is associated with male virility and fertility.
