Sculptor Ti Pèlen, Known Figure in Haitian Arts Collective, Dies at 66

Haitian sculptor Ti Pèlen, whose birth name is Jean Salomon Horace, died last month at the age of 66. His cause of death remains undisclosed.

His family will preserve the remaining artworks in his possession, according to a spokesperson for Pioneer Works, which featured his work in a 2018 exhibition on Port-au-Prince artists.

Pèlen’s carved stone sculptures—oversized heads with serene expressions—were a centerpiece of Pòtoprens: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince, a survey of contemporary Haitian artists. A New York Times review described the presence of the carvings as a “carnivalesque antidote to the classical sculpture courts of Western museums.”

The exhibition spotlighted members of the Atis Rezistans collective, including Jean Hérard Céleur, André Eugène, Guyodo (Frantz Jacques), and Evel Romain. Though not part of the group, Pèlen was a known figure in the neighboring grassroots movement of Rivière Froide, a riverside town in Port-au-Prince, where he was born, lived, and worked.

In a statement to ARTnews, Pioneer Works’ artistic director Gabriel Florenz recalled that when visiting his studio, he asked Pèlen how he conceived his stone sculptures. Pèlen replied that ideas often came to him in dreams and visions during walks along the river. “He is one of the most mystical artists I’ve ever met,” Florenz said.

Raised by Protestant parents who worked as a gardener and a market worker, Pèlen was interested in spiritual traditions outside of his family’s beliefs, according to a 2018 interview published in exhibition materials for the New York show. He turned towards working with stone, widely available in Rivière Froide, and began sculpting in the 1970s alongside Jean Camille Nasson, who died in 2008.

Reflecting on his work in the same interview, one of the few Pèlen did, he described an almost passive creative process, guided by shifts in the weather and local elements: “Sometimes, even I don’t understand how I made them.”