AphroChic Magazine: Issue No. 11

“Here,” is New York, where the Portau-Prince
native moved when she was just
9 years old, following the loss of her father.
Arriving in winter, the cold, the chaos
of the trip and the sudden need to learn
English were all obstacles to overcome,
but they weren’t her biggest problem.
“My first meal wasn't very good at all,” she
laughs, recalling a dish of rice and green
beans. “And I remember the beans were
kind of like sweet, and I'm like, “Beans are
not supposed to taste like this.” Her first
encounter with New York’s Chinese food
didn’t go much better. The ribs were even
sweeter than the beans. “For Haitians, meat
is not supposed to be sweet,” she remarks.
“Ever. So food wasn't really good for me
until my mom started cooking.”
Though the cuisine was challenging,
much of the rest of life flowed more
naturally. “I picked up English really
quickly,” she shrugs. “I guess when you're
nine you just kind of pick up things fast,”
though in the process she lost her hold on
French. A model student, Jessica found she
had the same quick facility with a number
of other subjects, especially art. “My
teachers loved me,” she says, “And I was
really passionate about all the art classes
that I was taking.” When she wasn’t in art
class, she was still creating, doodling in
books or sketching tattoos for friends at
lunch. Art was calling her, but she wasn’t
sure she wanted to answer.
“I think I may have been, happier when
I was just doing art, and not thinking about
what an artist is,” she muses. “I think you're
just more free that way, freer to just kind of
explore and play. When the moment comes
where you start thinking, ‘Oh, man, like,
I'm an artist now, with like, the capital A,
I think it can create a lot of stress.” Also at
work were familiar tropes about what was
and wasn’t possible for a girl from Haiti —
warnings that came from within as well as
without.
“Coming from my background it
wasn't something that I could imagine
myself doing,” the artist confesses. “So for
a long time, while I realized that I was really
passionate about this, I was getting to that
age where you had to pick a career and I
was like, ‘I can't choose this. I can't be the
artist with the capital A.’” Yet after a brief
detour into culinary arts, Jessica relented
to herself, applying and gaining acceptance
to the Parsons School of Design at The New
School.
At Parson’s, the fascination with
painting and drawing that captivated
Jessica in high school, gave way to a new
passion: sculpting. “I love working with my
hands,” she explains. “I used to draw the
figure and my next interest was sculpting
the figure. Working in 3D was just the next
step for me.” But learning the techniques of
a sculptor was only the first step. A larger
question was forming, waiting to be asked.
As she immersed herself in the techniques
of the artist, Jessica naturally
became equally steeped in the aesthetic
of her school, and the Eurocentric subtext
that accompanied it. It was a process that
she can only see clearly in retrospect. “I
didn't even think about it,” she laments.
“I just accepted it. Everything was looked
at and judged and critiqued through the
lens of European design and art.” As her
education became her aesthetic, it colored
not only in what she created, but how she
saw the creations of others. “That's the lens
that I began to see through, to judge good
work. I would find myself thinking, “Oh,
this isn't as sophisticated,’ when something
wasn’t in the Eurocentric type of design.”
Looking back now, she realizes how
complete the process had been, and how
early it started. “Right away, I guess I was
beginning to be brainwashed. And I was
just the good student who saw, listened, interpreted
a lot of those ideas, and began to
embed them in my work as my own.”
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