Kathia St. Hilaire

Kathia St. Hilaire’s distinctive technique combines printmaking, painting, collage, and weaving. By building up as many as forty or fifty layers of ink from carved linoleum blocks, St. Hilaire (b. 1995, Palm Beach, FL; lives and works in New York) creates striking surface textures. The substance of her work is equally layered: St. Hilaire, whose parents immigrated from Haiti, tells stories of that country’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. The exhibition subtitle, “Invisible Empires,” refers to the legacy of foreign interventions in the Caribbean and the persistence of subtler forms of imperialism today.​ 

In narrating her stories, St. Hilaire blends historical facts with the larger-than-life legends of Haiti’s famed personalities and describes her work as “magical realist.” In representing creolized cultures, the artist uses a collage of nontraditional materials, from banknotes and banana stickers to product packaging and tire treads. And like the open weaving at the edges of her work, the artist suggests, the Haitian revolution is itself an unfinished project. Contained within these vibrant, dreamlike pictures are past present, and the suggestion of possible futures.

Credit: Overview from museum website