Overview:
A new exhibition at Haiti Cultural Exchange in Brooklyn brings Jacmel’s Kanaval to life through immersive installation, photography and sculpture. Co-curated by Yvena Despagne and Executive Director Régine Roumain, the show explores Kanaval as history, identity and resistance while creating a cultural bridge for the Haitian Diaspora in New York.
Inside Haiti Cultural Exchange, sheer fabrics of violet, saffron, red, blue and rainbow are draped overhead. Layered with textured prints, strings of beads, tassels, and pom-poms, they sway gently above the crowd, leading viewers from the entrance inward, where a Kerabella is displayed deeper in the room. The immersive gallery unfolds like a lively procession, echoing the energy of Kanaval.
Below the canopy of fabrics, large papier-mâché masks protrude from the walls. A tiger-like face, striped in brown and gold, features curved fangs, closed eyes and a deep red mouth. Along the walls, photographs capture vibrant Kanaval crowds, bodies pressed together, horns raised, and brightly colored masks and sculptures held high. The installation not only documents Jacmel’s Kanaval, but it also brings its energy into the room.
In “Jakmèl: The Unveiling of Kanaval,” Kanaval is presented not only as a celebration but also as history, identity and collective memory.
The atmosphere grows more multidimensional through an installation by Lori Martineau which features live footage from Kanaval in Jacmel. This is played continuously alongside a curated playlist of Haitian Kanaval music. Together, these elements invite visitors to move beyond mere observation and to both embrace and inhabit tradition.
For co-curator Yvena Despagne, the road to Jakmèl’s Kanaval began in New York. Born and raised in the city, her earliest experience of carnival culture was the annual Labor Day Parade along Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Conversations with her friend Xavier Delatour led her to think more deeply about what diaspora celebrations preserve while also reshaping those traditions in new cultural contexts.
This curiosity grew into years of research into Haiti’s Kanaval traditions, with Jacmel standing out most for its extraordinary papier-mâché craftsmanship and for the way its characters return annually across generations.
According to the exhibition’s texts, Jacmel’s “Flora & Fauna” tradition features vibrant handcrafted papier-mâché animals that represent Haiti’s natural beauty, folklore, and social commentary. Frogs, birds, bulls, and other creatures are not merely decorative; they can symbolize ancestral spirits, rural histories and political critique. There are many layered meanings within Kanaval, which the exhibit discusses. The exhibition highlights these layered meanings within Kanaval.
Presented during the Kanaval season, the exhibition takes place at a time when Haitian communities both on the island and in the diaspora, are engaging with themes of culture, resistance and tradition.
Although she has personal ties to Haiti, Despagne has not experienced Jacmel’s Kanaval firsthand, a perspective that shaped her approach in curating.
Grounded in research and archives, and informed by artists’ lived experiences, the exhibition was co-curated with Régine Roumain, the founder and executive director of Haiti Cultural Exchange. Together, they aimed to draw Kanaval’s color, roots and symbolism into an immersive environment.
“My goal was to present the carnival in its richness, highlighting the vibrancy of its colors, the remarkable skill of its papier-mâché artisans and the historical and symbolic meanings behind the costumes and characters,” Despagne said.
One of Jacmel’s most recognizable characters, Chaloska, draws on a historical figure whose story is linked to a tragic event in Jacmel in 1914, according to Despagne.
Despagne said these artists’ perspectives allowed her to reimagine how the installation could evoke not only the visuals of Kanaval but also its emotional and communal resonance.
“Learning about this history at a young age was transformative; it deepened my understanding of the carnival’s symbolic dimensions and sparked a desire to study the broader narratives embodied in its characters,” she said.
Among the artworks and archives, the on-site installation by featured artist Steven Baboun captures that spirit. The material entrance, credited to Baboun, features cascading fabric and intricate beadwork that stretches across the ceiling, creating a suspended environment that suggests the movement of crowds flowing through Jacmel during Kanaval.
Saturated with vibrant colors, layered patterns and textured embellishments, Despagne describes it as a kind of “beautiful chaos,” where the space is designed not simply to be viewed but to be felt.
Despagne selected artists whose practices were already engaging Kanaval’s themes through lived memory and personal history.
For artist Baboun, Kanaval is deeply personal.
“Kanaval was one of the very few spaces where I felt completely free to be myself growing up,” Baboun said.
He recalls seeing streets in Port-au-Prince bursting with color and sound, Chaloska figures roaming freely and walls transformed into spontaneous murals during the season. Historically, he notes, Kanaval became a distinctly Haitian language of resistance, as a space where satire, costume and music turned political violence into collective critique.
Growing up as a queer Haitian child, he described Kanaval as a rare moment of affirmation, a space where transformation wasn’t questioned.
“During Kanaval transformation was expected, even celebrated,” he said. “The more audacious your dress, the more you are affirmed.”
He described Kanaval as a “rehearsal for freedom,” a world where identity could exist openly and joyfully.
His installation seeks to recreate that kaleidoscope and radical joy within the gallery, a kind of shelter where textures coexist without hierarchy and colors refuse discipline. He said he approached the gallery as something that needed to be undone.
“Historically, Kanaval in Haiti has always been about taking over space […] the boundary between spectator and participant collapses,” he said.
Rather than preserve the gallery’s neutrality, he sought to disrupt it, allowing the installation to spill, overlap and resist containment. The work becomes, in his words, “an act of world-making rooted in collective memory”. As Baboun explains, “Kanaval is not a random disorder. It is carefully unruly.”
“NA LIBÈTE M” Courtesy of Steven Baboun.
“Kanaval has always been practiced differently across the country, whether in Jacmel with its papier-mâché traditions, in Port-au-Prince with its dense musical processions, in Cap-Häitien where history and pageantry intertwine, or in Saint-Marc and beyond,” Baboun said. “Yet it remains a shared cultural language. My installation seeks to gather all of these geographies and memories under one Kanaval tonèl, a shelter, a threshold and invitation to return.”
While Baboun explores personal transformation, other artists in the exhibition approach Kanaval through the lenses of historical reclamation and material tradition.
Photographer Christina Rateau approached the Lansèt Kòd figure from an intimate vantage point, a Kanaval character whose origins trace back to colonial-era mockery before it was reclaimed after the Haitian Revolution as a symbol of resistance. The exhibition treats these figures as living symbols shaped by reinterpretation and memory.
Photographer Christina Rateau approached the Lansèt Kòd figure from an intimate vantage point. Lansèt Kòd is a Kanaval character whose origins trace back to colonial-era mockery before being reclaimed after the Haitian Revolution as a symbol of resistance. The exhibition as a whole treats these figures as living symbols shaped by reinterpretation and memory. For Rateau, the character of Lansèt Kòd is deeply personal.
“As a kid, my relationship with Kanaval characters like Lansèt Kòd was pure fear,” she said. “It was crucial for me to understand that Lansèt Kòd was never meant to scare me. He is my history, my ancestry, my friend.”
Rateau said the series became a way to confront and dismantle her own childhood fear. Her work reframes the figure not as something demonic or one-dimensional but as a vessel of memory and reclamation. She views the character as a radical act of reappropriation, formerly enslaved people reclaiming the very symbols used to dehumanize them.
Despagne said the artists included in the exhibition were already engaging these themes in their own practices long before being invited to participate.
This becomes especially evident in Tania L. Balan-Gaubert’s nine-horned cement sculpture titled “Gadyen”. Monumental and grounded, the sculpture presents less like decor and more like a guardian presence. Inspired by the Lansèt Kòd character, “Gadyen” reflects what Despagne describes as a reclamation of power shaped by resistance and continuity.
Beyond Baboun’s installation and Rateau’s photographs, the exhibition’s artists approach Kanaval through different materials and histories. Bachelor Jean-Baptiste’s “We Are the Youth” draws on the Chaloska figure, revisiting its symbolism through a contemporary lens.
Despagne said the exhibition’s impact has already revealed itself in small but intimate ways. During the opening reception, some attendees said they had never fully understood the historical depth behind Jacmel’s characters, despite growing up within Haitian communities. For some born in Haiti but unable to participate in Kanaval, and for others who have never visited at all, the exhibition offered an introduction.
In a city where returning home is not always possible, Despagne sees the exhibition as a bridge, a way to bring elements of Haiti’s visual and cultural language into diaspora space.
“There’s a profound desire to reconnect,” she said, especially among those navigating distance from home.
Presenting “Jakmèl: The Unveiling of Kanaval” in New York, she said, is ultimately about affirming that these traditions remain relevant, resilient and worthy of preservation.
Roumain situates the exhibition within the broader mission of Haiti Cultural Exchange.
“The mission and work of Haiti Cultural Exchange has always centered on the development and presentation of Haitian culture from both a historical perspective and a contemporary lens,” Roumain said. “Presenting this exhibition on Jakmèl Kanaval provides an opportunity for the Haitian Diaspora to learn about and experience aspects of this rich cultural tradition.”
Jakmèl: The Unveiling of Kanaval remains on view at Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, New York, through March 29. For more information about the exhibition and associated public programs, visit haiticulturalx.org/events.
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