This protest scene depicts a single figure standing in a heraldic pose above a sea of bodies that appear lifeless but awake. The central figure swings a tire engulfed in flames above his head. Tires are a recurrent symbol of protest in St. Hilaire’s work, which she incorporates both visually and physically into her collaged images.
Below the image of the tire is a white feathered bird, a multicultural symbol of peace and hope. This aligns the painting’s iconography with traditional depictions of the Baptism of Christ, where the Holy Spirit appears in the form of a dove. Christian allusions are commonly seen in Haitian art, subsequent to the Christianization of enslaved Africans by Roman Catholic missionaries, which led to African spiritual traditions creolizing with Christian beliefs and forming complex
and varied Vodou practices.
The painting’s youthful, isolated figure is clearly Messianic: he is both Jesus and Ògún, the Vodou warrior loa (spirit), attributed with guiding Haiti to independence in 1804. Ògún’s representation permeates much of St. Hilaire’s work, as his veve (religious symbol) is a diamond-shaped grid. In 2020, St. Hilaire sought to create a distinct new way of painting. Ultimately, she chose to abandon the standard square and adopt Ògún’s lattice formation, a symbol for not only war but craft.