Haitian “hungertuch” by Jacques-Richard Chery

I wrote this week’s visual meditation for ArtWay, on a painting on cloth that Haitian artist Jacques-Richard Chery realized as part of Misereor’s hunger veil project: http://www.artway.eu/content.php?id=2108&lang=en&action=show.

Click through to find out what a hunger veil is (sometimes also called a “fasting sheet” or “languishing rag”) and to be guided through the nine scenes.

Misereor has been carrying out this tradition for the last forty years, commissioning artists from all over the world. You can view nineteen of the twenty veils in their collection at https://www.misereor.de/fileadmin/publikationen/publikation-die-misereor-hungertuecher-begleitheft-ausstellung.pdf, along with German commentary, and last year’s veil can be found at https://www.misereor.de/mitmachen/fastenaktion/hungertuch/. Some of these are available for sale as large-scale prints on cloth at the organization’s online shop.

Here are a few examples of hunger veils that were in use during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The liturgical purpose for all but the last one has been recovered.