There is a particular form of sensory consciousness present in Kathia St. Hilaire’s work that demands focused attention because she embeds it with personal, historical, and sociopolitical experience. Her marvelous content offers an artistic language and world-making process that is complicated and richly imbued with visions that not only express a wide range of human emotions but are essentially and autonomously framed by her conceptual representations of the world of her ancestors, primarily those deriving from Haiti. Her artistic evolution is marked by a distinctive fusion of cultural influences and a profound exploration of identity, humanism, and social justice.

St. Hilaire's visual elements are not just aesthetic choices; they carry deep cultural significance, reflecting her Haitian roots and colonial remnants. Through her paintings, St. Hilaire explores the complexities of identity, the immigrant experience, the machination of imperialism, and her cultural hybridity as a Haitian-American or American-Haitian. She is both an outsider and an insider with a strong grasp on artistic expression. Her work juxtaposes themes of conquest, cultural suppression, and labor exploitation with imagery that challenges stereotypes and preconceived notions about race, gender, ethnicity, and power relations. As Martin Heidegger asserts, the "truth is inherent in the essence." St. Hilaire's hyphenated cultural identity as a Haitian-American is characterized by a history of struggle, freedom, autonomy, and liberation from the harsh chains of colonial slavery. It also involves the worship of non-European ancestral deities, such as Ogoun, the West African spirit-warrior. In one of St. Hilaire's works, Caco: Benoit Batraville, Ogoun is depicted as a revolutionary peasant with a red scarf tied to his left thigh, riding a horse, and spearing a uniformed adversary on a white horse. This powerful representation encapsulates the essence of her cultural being.

History creates the habitat within Kathia St. Hilaire’s mind. It is from here that she articulates the past via aesthetically pleasing representations. Imitating, and yet going beyond the aesthetic of the traditional Vodun flags, St. Hilaire developed a technique called reduction relief printing— she starts with a large drawing before transferring it onto a sheet of linoleum, which she then carves out in small sections and prints onto everything from beauty products to tires, until the whole linoleum is carved away. Her materials are vast, including those that either echo history (shredded tires, banknotes, coins, photographs, banana leaves, scrap metal, and aluminum) or portray the emotional toll of certain legacies of colonialism (the use of skin-lighting cream).

St. Hilaire's art is inherently anti-imperialist, as she challenges the dominant narratives that have long glorified empire while silencing the voices of those who suffered under their rule. Her visual creations serve as a vivid and compelling counter-narrative, uncovering the concealed and untold histories of resistance and hardship that are often overlooked in the glossy, sanitized accounts of imperial rule. Her approach serves as a form of optical resistance against the sanitized, often mythologized, versions of history perpetuated by imperial power resonating with the global struggle for justice and decolonization. Her art serves as a catalyst for empathy, a catalyst for reconsidering the past's prevailing narratives, and ultimately, a means to forge a more equitable and inclusive future. St. Hilaire's exploration transcends artistic boundaries, sparking conversations that challenge, inspire, and enlighten.


— Dr. Patrick Sylvain

The following Q & A and poem were composed on the occasion of the exhibition.

Sylvain—What kind of support or discouragement did you receive/face while embarking on your education in the visual arts? What kind of changes (attitudes) have you noticed, and why?

St. Hilaire—Growing up in a predominantly Caribbean area opened my eyes to different Black subcultures and made me understand the commonalities and differences we share. There was an emphasis to create an identity that can assimilate into various parts of American culture. Often my family and the community I lived in invested a lot of money into beauty supplies. Using skin-lightening creams, relaxers and different hair products allowed you to remove stereotypes that people place on you. Looking back this experience made me realize how race is surface level and the materials we engage with forms our society. This is why I am invested in using commodity-based materials because of their ability to talk about current and past issues.

I come from a family who are craftsmen and musicians. Having a family like this exposed me to many forms of artmaking and influenced me to attend art school for middle and high school where printmaking was introduced to me. Having this interest in printmaking led me to further study this process at RISD. My interests in Vodoun Flags and retelling my own narrative related to the Haitian diaspora led me to imitate these flags through a printmaking technique called reduction relief printing. Starting with a large drawing that is transferred onto large sheets of linoleum, I meticulously carve out small sections of the linoleum and print on a variety of surfaces like paper, beauty products, industrial metal, fabric or tires. For each carved layer, I think a lot about the viscosity of printmaking ink, the pressure that is applied on the linoleum, and the objects I chose to print on. This process creates a shiny-textured dense surface for me to layer with sewing, collaging, carving, and weaving processes. My material choices are aligned with culturally significant references.

Sylvain—Why is your artwork in conversation with (or interrogating) Haiti's political history and its maligned cultural expression / religious practice—Vodoun?

St. Hilaire—The cultivation of bananas as a global commodity paved the way for imperialism in the Caribbean and Central America. The Banana Wars were a series of conflicts that consisted of military occupation, police action, and intervention by the United States in Central America and the Caribbean between 1898 to 1934. I see The Banana Wars as one of the starting points for misconceptions that America has of Latin America both politically and culturally. The power of imperialism is not only the ability to tell the story of another person but to make the definitive story that person. This can be seen in the Occupation of Haiti in 1915, many Westerners created exoticized and racist tropes to condone American presence. This caused a negative stigma on Haitian Vodou (which was banned during the time of the Occupation), the creation of the black zombie in American Hollywood films, and seeing the Haitian people as half child and devil. These stereotypes persisted decades after the occupation, especially during the time when an influx of Haitians were immigrating to America during 1970’s to early 2000’s. Inspired by historical events, Haitian and Latin American mythology, magical realism will be a way to explore the lasting impact The Banana Wars has on contemporary society.