AKANSYÈL (2019)

AKANSYÈL, meaning "rainbow" in Haitian Creole, is a three-channel video performance that imagines a fictional union between queerness and Catholicism through the lens of Haitian church traditions. In this ritualized endurance piece, the artist attempts to bind two textiles together using their mouth, each cloth representing a distinct identity. One symbolizes queerness, the other Catholicism.

The red and blue fabrics echo the colors of the Haitian flag, situating the act within a national and spiritual context. Off-screen, the textiles are tied at their ends, suggesting an unseen but intentional connection. The gesture is at once intimate and strenuous, embodying the complex effort of holding together two cultural forces often seen as oppositional.

AKANSYÈL is not a resolution but a reckoning. It offers the body as a site of tension, convergence, and imagined reconciliation.