Kathia St. Hilaire's newest series of work explores Spiralism, a Haitian literary movement founded in the 1960's in response to François Duvalier’s dictatorship, which was marked by unrelenting violence towards Haitian civilians in order to enforce Duvalier’s totalitarian vision. Spiralism explores 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. Spiralism enacts metaphors for complex histories of colonialism and occupation that continue to ripple out and recur throughout generations.
St. Hilaire’s new works focus on the Parsley Massacre of 1937, a mass execution of Haitian families, led by then dictator of the Dominican Republic Rafael Trujillo, continuing decades of conflict between the two nations. Lonbraj Nan Eleonore Juliette Chevallier Moreau depicts Trujillo at the time of the massacre. He wields a machete used by his soldiers, chosen as it was the weapon of Haitian farmers in the area on whom the regime put the blame for the massacre. The painting is named for his mixed race Haitian grandmother, a relation that he would struggle with as he rose to power in the perceived ‘white’ Dominican Republic.