Watch the Video:
Edwidge Danticat
The Farming of Bones, 1988
Artist Statement
In the Dominican Republic of 1937, Rafael Trujillo’s Perejil Massacre murdered untold thousands of Haitians on the banks of the Yaque River. The river filled with blood and that blood, it is told, runs to this day in the veins of the Haitian diaspora. In the video Ya Que by Nikki Juen, a single book page from the book The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat is suspended over a pool of deep red liquid. As the page is lowered, the liquid is slowly drawn up the fibers of the book page, crossing words, sentences, borders, and bodies with its slow, nearly imperceptible seep.
Great Ideas at ChiDM, 2018. Photo: The Office of Experience.
