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The Cinderella Complex
- The Cinderella Complex
The Cinderella Complex (Le complex de Cendrillon) is a seven-hour performance that considers the ways in which families, societies, and political powers build the "femininity system" through, for example, little girls being taught embroidery as part of their education in postcolonial, post-French Haiti. The work looks at how certain values are maintained and transmitted from mothers to daughters: from my mother to me. Sitting in a wedding dress, in the window of Galerie JM Arts, Beaubourg, Paris, I am sewing artificial flower petals on a white veil. (In May 2010, The Cinderella Complex was presented as a video installation during the Dakar Biennale.)
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Barbara Prézeau-Stephenson is a Haitian artist and art historian. Born in 1965 in Port-au-Prince, she grew up in an artistic family. She has participated in exhibitions in Montreal, Paris, Seville, San Diego, Brussels, Chicago, San Francisco, Quito, Ottawa, and New York. She is cofounder and current chair of the Fondation AfricAmericA and has recently completed an MA in management of cultural organizations at Université de Paris-Dauphine, with a dissertation titled "The Contribution of Cultural Production in the Economic Development of Haiti."
