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.
Here St. Hilaire depicts a victim of the Parsley Massacre of 1937, marked by a mass execution of Haitian families, led by then dictator of the Dominican Republic Rafael Trujillo, continuing decades of conflict between the two nations. St. Hilaire depicts a victim of the massacre in Lonbraj La Nan Pèsi— a Haitian laborer, identified through the straw hat at his feet, sits dejected and impaled as a bird flies overhead.