Land of High Mountains: The Art of Survival highlights Haiti’s creativity and resilience

Threaded Voices: Stories from Duquesa

Upstairs Artspace is proud to present its summer show titled, Land of High Mountains: The Art of Survival, an exhibition featuring the work of children from Haiti, assembled by Hague Williams of Landrum, SC, alongside selections from the Haitian art collection of Tryon residents Harold Maass and Margaret Curtis.

The exhibition will launch June 14 with a free reception at 2 p.m. and will run through August 28, 2026. The contemporary art gallery is located at 49 S. Trade St., Tryon, NC.

At the center of the exhibition is Threaded Voices: Stories from Duquesa, which emerged from a six-day interdisciplinary medical mission in an informal settlement outside Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where families (primarily Haitian refugees) live beside the largest open-air landfill in the Caribbean.

Within this context, art was not introduced as instruction or therapy, but as a practice of listening. During daily workshops led by Hague Williams, an art teacher at Landrum High School, children created personal story flags using simple materials such as muslin, pencils, paint markers, fabric, and thread.

They were guided by three open questions about their lives, daily experiences, and emotional landscapes. The responses were symbolic, direct, and imaginative. No corrections were made, and no interpretations were imposed. All materials were left behind for continued use, Williams explains.

After the workshops, discarded materials from the landfill were collected and incorporated into a large-scale stitched textile installation, embedding the physical reality of Duquesa into the work itself. 

The project continued through a reciprocal exchange with students at Landrum High School in South Carolina, where the artist teaches. His students drew portraits based on photographs of participating Haitian children. These works, along with documentation of the final installation, were returned to the community through a subsequent medical team, “completing a cycle rooted in connection rather than extraction,” according to Williams.

Presented as both installation and documentary presentation, Threaded Voices centers the voices, creativity, and resilience of the children while reflecting on what it means to work with care, humility, and responsibility across distance and difference.

Hague Williams will also return to the gallery on July 12 at 2 p.m. for a public presentation discussing the quilt project and the collaborative process behind its creation. The public is invited to attend.

Alongside the Duquesa quilt, viewers will find a collection of Haitian art belonging to Harold Maass and Margaret Curtis. In 1993, Maass, then a reporter for the Miami Herald, moved to Haiti to cover the aftermath of the military coup of 1992 which deposed the nation’s first democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide. It was a difficult and violent time. Maass found himself decompressing by spending time in the art galleries and warehouses of Port au Prince and other towns.

“The art was uplifting. At a time of crisis, I was struck by how the painters celebrated every achievement—from the farmers who dug an existence out of the land to their ancestors who were dragged to the country in chains and won their own freedom by defeating what was then were the world’s greatest military power,” Maass said. 

Upstairs Artspace is located at 49 S. Trade St., Tryon, NC. More information can be found at UpstairsArtspace.org or by calling (828) 859-2828.