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Francesca Momplaisir’s story takes place in a sentient house that observes the goings-on inside its domain, and what goes on inside is terrible. I will examine the art found in the text.
This book does contain discussion and links to disturbing subject matter.
“Neg Mawon”
| Kristina Just, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The story’s main character is Lucien, a former pimp who escapes Haiti (the book mentions Haiti’s Palais Nacional and the Nèg Mawon statue) during a coup and later resides with his family in New York (the text makes an offhand reference to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral). He has childhood memories of his aunt collecting a line of statuettes called Lladros, which led me to find the company from Spain. In New York, Lucien collects furniture and other abandoned luxury items. His family will continue this tradition of collecting their own figurines. Marie-Ange (Lucien’s wife), a practitioner of Vodou, decorates the family’s hidden room with figures depicting Ezili, and their daughters use the goddess for personal protection. There are also descriptions of figurines depicting Catholic saints and the Virgin Mary in the text.
Tangerineduel, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Committing acts that call to mind the awful story of the abductions that happened in Cleveland, Ohio, Lucien later turns this space into a prison by abducting girls and women. In this dungeon, the prisoners see the paintings and figures depicting the Virgin Mary. Two victims (who are undocumented), Sol and her mother, have their own Virgin Mary for comfort. The divine figures only view the horrors that occur in this place, but they never intervene to rescue the captives. The book takes a grim view of their usefulness. What’s worse, even as the horrors are exposed to the world, the survivors’ future is bleak and, unfortunately, reflects a reality that will haunt you long after you close the book.
When visiting a caregiver’s home, Lucien observes the harmony of the house’s interior layout by comparing it to (and I quote) “da Vinci’s Vitruvian man.” It took me a long time to realize that this connects to how the book depicts Lucien’s house as an anthropomorphic being that watches him, his family, and his victims.
As Lucien collects victims, he hires a Haitian artist named Dieuseul, whose painting skills, according to the book, can switch between the Dutch Baroque Style and Spanish Cubism to make portraits of his daughters. The text prefers Vermeer’s paintings of everyday female subjects and shows disdain for how Cubist art depicts them. The characters even reference Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which depicts French sex workers. However, disturbingly, the artist compares a portrait of Lucien’s daughters to that specific Picasso painting. Lucien prefers it because he wants a pliable ideal to control. His own daughters were not safe from his views. The book also compares Dieuseul’s style to Haitian artist Laurent Casimir’s work.
“Laurent, Casimir – Market”
Despite the disturbing content, I recommend this book.
5/6/25 rewrote a sentence
Art History Ramblings 
