Lafleur ships his canvases from Port-au-Prince to Budapest, where Bogaert sources antique church banners and tapestries, excising the Virgin Marys and child Christs and inserting Lafleur’s self-portraits and Black Madonnas. Primitif 2.5 (2024) stands out: Bogaert allowed fruit, furniture, and part of a Madonna’s hand to remain “in the picture.” Replacing hallowed European religious figures with contemporary African and Haitian personages seems to recover psychic territory and time from slave-economy history, not in combative terms but inch by meticulous inch.
Bogaert travels with the art to his native town of Bruges to outfit and finish framing Lafleur’s images with the help of Inge De Zutter and Paula Devriendt. They collaborate on color choice and subtle transitions between lace, sequin, silk, bead, rug-hooking, tassel, fringe, gimping, and machine stitching. The surrounding textile’s interplay of textures and range of faded antique to modern colors spotlight Lafleur’s restrained, flat painting. The “Primitif” series recalls Margaret van Eyck, picturing her ceremoniously replaced by an anonymous Black woman similarly posed.
The “Twa Drapo” series, three self-portraits by Lafleur comfortably seated with his cat, two geese, and a dog, respond to Donald Trump’s lies about the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio stealing and eating people’s pets. Lafleur paints himself as if honorably responding to Trump’s aggression: Drapo Chat presents Lafleur protected behind sunglasses, Drapo Oies (2025) depicts absolute neutrality, and Drapo Chien (2025) conveys glints of pain within strong resolve.
Showcasing Lafleur’s hand at sculpture, The “Anba Dlo” series combines wooden faces Bogaert sends to Lafleur from his collection of Congolese tourist masks, which are considered historic remnants from disappearing villages. Lafleur combines these open-mouthed and empty or closed-eyed heads with fragments of diving gear left behind from former Haitian aquatourism. The streamlined, single-flippered sea spirits or personal gods lack torsos and limbs and are protectively dressed in rubber masks, snake-like wire or rope hair, fishing lures, all wittily christened with the Lafleur and Bogaert logo.
In an email Lafleur said:
Most people, even in the city, still have some connection to the countryside, which we call a ’bitasyon.’ It has layered meanings—it’s the literal place your family has lived, especially if they’ve been there a long time, like the actual land. But it’s also seen as the repository of your family spirits and ancestors—where a lot of your spiritual power resides.
Practical, improvisational, and portable Lafleur & Bogaert in New York is light in temperament and heavy with history.