Virtual Artist Conversation: JAKMÈL / The Unveiling of Kanaval

This Saturday, March 14, I'll be joining fellow artists Steven Baboun, Bacheler Jean-Pierre, Christina Rateau, and Kedler St-Hilaire for a virtual conversation about JAKMÈL: The Unveiling of Kanaval, on view at Haiti Cultural Exchange through March 29. I'd love for you to tune in.

My contribution to the exhibition is Gadyen, nine cemented horns invoking the Haitian Lwa Bossou Twa Kon and the carnival figures Lanset Kod. The chains and whip in the work are held at rest, no longer instruments of force or violence but markers of a shift from domination to remembrance. Gadyen holds reclaimed power in balance, an inheritance shaped by collective resistance and survival.

This work comes from a place I know intimately: the long-distance nationalism that many Haitians in the diaspora carry. I've experienced Kanaval in Chicago, Brooklyn, and Toronto, always in relation to Haiti, but always across distance. Kanaval and other cultural celebrations fill that absence, but it's of course not the same. That is the condition from which I make work. The hybrid forms that emerge from my practice are born through syncretism and invention, drawing from Haitian, African, and Indigenous traditions to build something that carries ancestral truth forward.

JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval is a living archive of survival stories, memory, and self-expression. I'm honored to be part of it.

Join us Saturday, March 14 | 3–5pm

📍 Virtual Register here