Tessa Mars is a Haitian visual artist living and working in Port-au-Prince. She completed her bachelor in Visual Arts in France, at Rennes 2 University in 2006. From 2006 to 2013 she worked as a Cultural project’s coordinator at Foundation AfricAméricA. Since 2013 she has been solely focused on developing her career as an artist. Her work has been exhibited in Haiti, Canada, France, Italy and the United States.
From May 31 to July 6, 2019, the exhibition "Model Island - Manman zile - Island Template" was held at Maison Dufort. This exhibition produced in collaboration with Le Centre d'Art offered the Haitian public the opportunity to enter the creative universe of artist Tessa Mars and to share her questions regarding the notions of belonging, violence, sacrifice, transformations and shared destiny of beings and things.
This exhibition is an exploration of the island and urban lifestyle through the Haitian experience. She takes Haiti with its unique history as a subject of study to better understand the issues related to "insularity" inside and outside the boundaries of the territory. It also seeks to determine how different power struggles sometimes violently shape our insular societies.
The three titles in English, French and Creole are a reminder of the multiculturalism of the Haitian societies and its historical experiences. They each evoke a perspective of the same questioning and the process of constructing the most complete image possible.
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Tessa Mars
painting Island Life
Flashmag January 2020 www.flashmag.net