The Flags of Clotaire Bazile: A Description

Figure 1.

Erzulie Freda. Flag by Clotaire Bazile. Courtesy of Candice Russell Collection.
“Erzulie Freda”
34H” x 28” Fabric, sequins, beads
Collection of Candice Russell

Ezili Freda, whom this flag honors, is the principal female spirit of the “cool” ancestral lwa of Ginen (Guinea) grouped in this Rada pantheon. Poetically rendered in the language of arch femininity as the quintessence of sensuous allure and romance, she is usually bejeweled, powdered and perfumed and dressed in luxurious satins and laces after she mounts (or possesses) a sèvitè (one who serves the lwa) during ceremonies. Her aesthetic recapitulates and subverts what Joan Dayan has described in Haiti, History and the Gods as “the violent yoking of decorum and lust” (58) played out in the colonial erotics of the mulatto mistress.

According to Clotaire Bazile, his flags for Ezili Freda with the heart vèvè [ritual emblem] have always been the most sought after by European and North American buyers. In this particularly elegant instance of the genre, Bazile has depicted the fantasy of the feminine as sublimely decorative, fusing human and divine love in the intoxicating perfection of appearance. In her interpretation of the classic stages of possession she observed in those mounted by Ezili Freda, Maya Deren (1953) describes the first as a seamless, ritual incarnation of the exquisite coquette who gives and receives gifts of luxury and love, to be followed later by expressions of betrayal and rage. When the collector and curator Candice Russell showed me this flag, I saw Deren’s description of the initial, fantastic allure of Ezili Freda mirrored in it. The intense delicacy of the central panel where lacy scrolls and leaves extend from the scalloped heart into the white satin background sprinkled with pastel and silver sequins is a visual analogue to Deren’s evocation in Divine Horsemen: “She is the divinity of the dream, and it is the nature of the dream to begin where reality ends and to spin it and send it forward in space, as the spider spins and sends forward its own thread” (144).

Bazile characterizes his flags as “classical,” reflecting his vision of the spiritual integrity of the ritual drapo [sacred flag] adapted to the market. In this work, made in the mid-1980s, he features rose, as well as other shimmering pastel shades traditionally associated with Ezili Freda, in the designs which embellish and border her vèvè. He is known for his development and perfection of prominent geometric borders which began to be a general characteristic of ritual drapo made in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Tselos). The background of the inner panel is dotted rather than filled in entirely with sequins in a style which is referred to in Kreyòl as simen grenn or scattering seeds and which often characterizes ritual flags, especially those made prior to the late 1960s before sequins became more plentiful due to the establishment of American owned re-export garment factories in Haiti. The “flash of the spirit” (Thompson) in the glittering, sequin saturated contemporary flag traveled via these factories where clothes were ornamented with sequins and beads which workers earning approximately $.14 an hour (Kernaghan and Briggs) swept up and took home after an order was finished and their colors were no longer needed. Bazile’s sister worked in one of these factories in the early 1970s and supplied the sequins for his first flags.

Figure 2.

Danbala Wedo. Flag by Clotaire Bazile. Courtesy of Candice Russell Collection.
“Danbala Wedo”
39” x 33G” Fabric, sequins, beads
Collection of Candice Russell

The central emblem of this flag designed in the late 1980s is what Bazile refers to as a double vèvè for the ancestral serpent entities Danbala and Ayida Wedo as well as Ezili Freda, represented by the heart between them. As major spirits of the Rada pantheon, Danbala and Ezili Freda are often depicted together. In the interview which follows, Bazile explains that one of the first two flags he made for his temple...