Kathia St. Hilaire’s practice grapples with histories that have been forgotten or actively suppressed, focusing on Haiti, where her parents emigrated from to the United States. The artist tells stories of the island nation’s history and the long shadows it casts, from French colonialism to independence, from U.S. occupation to the diasporic communities in which she was raised. Her latest works explore Spiralism, a Haitian literary movement founded in the 1960’s in response to dictatorship. Spiralism investigates the generational effects of conflict over freedom and dictatorship in Haiti, investigating how ongoing tensions are related to its history and folk culture, and considering a reconciliation of lived experiences through past, present, and future. It offers a worldview that recognizes all circumstances within a chaotic yet interrelated process in resistance to colonial exploitation.
In this work, St. Hilaire incorporates barbed wire into the canvas, through a process of sanding and painting while maintaining the material’s visual integrity. The artist was drawn to barbed wire for its coiled, spiraled form, as well as its historical use across wars, colonization, and violent occupations. Having been interested in the material for years, St. Hilaire felt she could not access this material for its sterility and hopelessness. Through a sanding and imprinting method, St. Hilaire depicts the anonymous figure of a migrant, held back within the clutches of barbed wire.