A Taste of Salt/‘Goute Sel’: Artistic Collaboration at the Ghetto Biennale

Abstract

In December 2013, the artists Katy Beinart and Mabelle Williams came together to make a work of art entitled ‘Goute Sel’ (Taste Salt). Performed on the opening day of the 3rd Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the work focused on the vèvè–as aspect of ritual practice from Haitian Vodou–using salt collected from a saltworks on the Haitian coast. The artists created a pattern on the ground by which to call to Vodou gods and ancestors. At the end of the performance, the remaining salt was handed out to members of the audience who were invited to taste it. In this article, Beinart, a white UK-based woman artist (of South-African Jewish heritage), and Williams, a Black Haitian woman artist, report and reflect on their collaboration. Told through both artists’ voices, the general narration is provided by Beinart (the ‘I’ is her voice and the ‘we’ is used where discussing joint work), while Williams’s voice features in quotations from a series of conversations between the artists that took place in 2019–2020.