When Haitian artists Jerry “Twoket” Chery and Michel Lafleur were barred from boarding their plane from the Dominican Republic, it was terrible but not entirely unexpected.
The two men were travelling to Melbourne, Australia for the Ghetto Biennale, an exhibition started in 2009 by the Port-au-Prince collective Atis Rezistans when several of its artists were denied entry to the US after being invited to take part in an exhibition in Miami. Haitians have less freedom of movement than most nationalities on Earth – so if they could not go to the art world, Atis Rezistans would make the art world come to them.
