Nov 6 | Mizik Ayiti! Residency | Bobby Raymond & Markus Schwartz featuring Monvelyno
2025-11-06 18:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Join us on Thursdays this fall for the Mizik Ayiti! Residency Series. The first residency will be held by bassist Bobby Raymond and percussionist Markus Schwartz and marks HCX’s inaugural public event in our new home at 35 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, NY.
SPECIAL GUEST ANNOUNCEMENT! Thursday, November 6’s Gede themed performance will feature guest guitarist & vocalist Monvelyno Alexis. Monvelyno is a contemporary anchor of Haitian jazz and experimental sound. His skill as a vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist has earned him the respect of the New York and global Haitian community. His music is led by his Haitian culture, particularly the spiritual and musical traditions of Vodou.

The 2025 performance season launches at HCX with the Mizik Ayiti! Residency Series. On Thursday evenings, artist-composers host unique sets joined by a rotation of guest artists and ensembles. Performances offer the opportunity to showcase new work and workshop arrangements across the musical landscape, from traditional genres reverberating the strength of the tanbou to the contemporary sound like fusion jazz and electronic music carrying Haitian vibration into the future.

Wear your black, white, and purple! Best dressed wins a season pass to the Early Winter Mizik Ayiti! series.
Thursday, November 6
6-9pm (45 min sets at 6:30 & 7:45)
35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY

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About the Musicians
Born in Haiti, bassist Bobby Raymond established his musical career in the 1980s alongside progressive Haitian jazz musicians including Ernst Crepsac Marcelin, Buyu Ambroise, Eddy Bourjolly, Joe Charles, Phillipe Charles, Bobby Sanabria, Mino Cinelu, and Eddy Rodriguez. He joined several influential bands including Freefall, Mozayik, Mystik and the Blues In Red Band, collaborating with artists like Emeline Michel, Beethova Obas, and Alan Cave. During the 1990s, Bobby was part of the Blue Bomba Quartet with Robert Aaron, Willie Martinez, and Ismael Bongo Bruno, occasionally joined by legendary Cuban percussionist Carlos “Patato” Valdez. Bobby remains one of the most sought-after bass players in the New York City Haitian music scene.
Native to Denmark, Markus Schwartz is a Grammy-nominated percussionist, recording artist and educator with over twenty-five years of experience studying traditional Haitian religious music. Since the early 1990s, he has traveled frequently to Haiti, following Haitian percussionists on pilgrimages to learn the intricate drumming styles of various lakou. He became a respected drummer at Haitian religious ceremonies and was a member of the groundbreaking Haitian Jazz quintet Mozayik alongside Bobby Raymond. As a first-call percussionist on the NYC Haitian music scene, Markus has released four recordings as a leader and currently performs with Lakou Brooklyn Quartet, Grammy-winner David Sanchez’ Carib project, and Ches Smith’s We All Break.

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HCX | Mizik Ayiti! Residency
HCX positions this invitational residency as an opportunity to innovate and workshop concepts and works-in-progress, showcase new work, and build networks for artists’ future presentation (e.g. booking, touring) at other cultural institutions and stages.
Rarely do artists receive a consistent opportunity to create and share in “real time”–to develop their ideas in a beta form, experiment, and refine amidst presenting publicly. Over the course of 6 weeks, resident artists receive a platform to fine-tune approaches, activate jam sessions, and explore sonic possibilities while developing relationships with their audiences.
Join us for all of Bobby Raymond & Markus Schwartz Mizik Ayiti! Residency performances Thursdays this fall:
October 9, 16, 23, 30 and November 6 and 13.
6-9pm (45 min sets at 6:30 & 7:45)

Ti Atis Second Saturdays: Mapping with Collage and Crayon Rubbings by Ani Brutus
2025-11-08 14:00 - 16:00 | Brooklyn Children’s Museum, 145 Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11213
Ti Atis returns to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a new season of interactive youth and family programming! Join us for the kick-off event in November featuring mapping with collage and crayon rubbings with artist Ani Brutus!
Saturday, November 8, 2025
2-4pm
Brooklyn Children’s Museum
145 Brooklyn Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11213
What is the shape and texture of our neighborhood? Learn how to document features within our natural world and our neighborhood. Families will map their Lakou (community) through collage, paint, and mixed media, including how to capture the textures of our environments using rubbing techniques.
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About the Artist
Ani Brutus (b. 2004) is a Haitian-Filipino interdisciplinary artist based in Jamaica, New York. Born in the United States, first-generation, Brutus aims to highlight the forces uniting ancestry and the diaspora, by uncovering the crossroads in everyday life. Between the layering and distortion of found objects, Brutus utilizes material culture to document social history within Afro-Caribbean and Luzon diasporic communities. Ani Brutus is an undergraduate student at CUNY Hunter College, where they advance their practice in Studio Arts.
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Attendance free with museum admission. Limited number of free community tickets provide to the HCX community. RSVP below while availability lasts.
Spaces are limited. Purchase a ticket to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum here ».
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About Ti Atis
Ti Atis returns to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a new season of interactive youth and family programming! Ti Atis (Little Artists) engages youth of Haitian descent and their peers with Haitian history and heritage via the arts, giving young people the tools to build an inclusive and culturally informed future as they learn about diverse art forms from professional Haitian artists.
Mark your calendars! Happening the second Saturday of every month from November 2024 to May 2025.

Nov 13 | Mizik Ayiti! Residency | Bobby Raymond & Markus Schwartz: Twoubadou Lakay Honoring the musical legacy of Robert Molin
2025-11-13 18:00 - 21:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Join us on Thursdays this fall for the Mizik Ayiti! Residency Series. The first residency will be held by bassist Bobby Raymond and percussionist Markus Schwartz and marks HCX’s inaugural public event in our new home at 35 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, NY.
FINALE PERFORMANCE ANNOUNCEMENT!
Twoubadou Lakay
Honoring the musical legacy of Robert Molin
Guitarist & composer Robert Molin is an often overlooked but important contributor to the Twoubadou traditions of Aux Cayes in southern Haiti. Bobby & Markus have invited a handful of special musical guests for this final residency performance: Guitarists Gary Josama & Roland Cameau, Singer Joe Montour and Percussionist Camille Hostin.
Haitian Twoubadou emerged as an original national genre when Haitian seasonal workers connected rhythms of Cuban guarijo to Haitian merengue. With lyrics mixing satire, romance, and everyday life, twoubadou’s delicate and joyful sound highlights the history of Haitians movement around the Caribbean and some of the instruments that we brought from across the ocean: the guitar and drum.
The 2025 performance season launches at HCX with the Mizik Ayiti! Residency Series. On Thursday evenings, artist-composers host unique sets joined by a rotation of guest artists and ensembles. Performances offer the opportunity to showcase new work and workshop arrangements across the musical landscape, from traditional genres reverberating the strength of the tanbou to the contemporary sound like fusion jazz and electronic music carrying Haitian vibration into the future.

Thursday, November 13
6-9pm (45 min sets at 6:30 & 7:45)
35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY

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About the Musicians
Born in Haiti, bassist Bobby Raymond established his musical career in the 1980s alongside progressive Haitian jazz musicians including Ernst Crepsac Marcelin, Buyu Ambroise, Eddy Bourjolly, Joe Charles, Phillipe Charles, Bobby Sanabria, Mino Cinelu, and Eddy Rodriguez. He joined several influential bands including Freefall, Mozayik, Mystik and the Blues In Red Band, collaborating with artists like Emeline Michel, Beethova Obas, and Alan Cave. During the 1990s, Bobby was part of the Blue Bomba Quartet with Robert Aaron, Willie Martinez, and Ismael Bongo Bruno, occasionally joined by legendary Cuban percussionist Carlos “Patato” Valdez. Bobby remains one of the most sought-after bass players in the New York City Haitian music scene.
Native to Denmark, Markus Schwartz is a Grammy-nominated percussionist, recording artist and educator with over twenty-five years of experience studying traditional Haitian religious music. Since the early 1990s, he has traveled frequently to Haiti, following Haitian percussionists on pilgrimages to learn the intricate drumming styles of various lakou. He became a respected drummer at Haitian religious ceremonies and was a member of the groundbreaking Haitian Jazz quintet Mozayik alongside Bobby Raymond. As a first-call percussionist on the NYC Haitian music scene, Markus has released four recordings as a leader and currently performs with Lakou Brooklyn Quartet, Grammy-winner David Sanchez’ Carib project, and Ches Smith’s We All Break.

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HCX | Mizik Ayiti! Residency
HCX positions this invitational residency as an opportunity to innovate and workshop concepts and works-in-progress, showcase new work, and build networks for artists’ future presentation (e.g. booking, touring) at other cultural institutions and stages.
Rarely do artists receive a consistent opportunity to create and share in “real time”–to develop their ideas in a beta form, experiment, and refine amidst presenting publicly. Over the course of 6 weeks, resident artists receive a platform to fine-tune approaches, activate jam sessions, and explore sonic possibilities while developing relationships with their audiences.
Join us for all of Bobby Raymond & Markus Schwartz Mizik Ayiti! Residency performances Thursdays this fall:
October 9, 16, 23, 30 and November 6 and 13.
6-9pm (45 min sets at 6:30 & 7:45)

True North | Community Screening & Conversation
2025-11-21 18:00 - 21:00 | The Center For Fiction, 15 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11217
As part of the Fall of Freedom nationwide activation of creative resistance, Haiti Cultural Exchange and Rada Collaborative present a special screening of True North at The Center For Fiction. Fall of Freedom is an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation.
Through never before seen compelling historical footage and the voices of those who lived through the tumultuous period of 1960s Montréal, True North uses a bold cinematic aesthetic that centers the power of memory and archive to expose the pivotal events of a moment that impacted the global movement for Black liberation.

Center for Fiction
15 Lafayette Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Friday, Nov 21
6-9pm
RSVP for free here »

6:00 // Mix & mingle – food and drinks available for purchase (from The Center For Fiction)
6:30 // Introduction of True North by director Michèle Stephenson
6:40 // Screening of True North
8:00 – 8:30 // Community conversation
8:30 – 9 // Closing mix & mingle

Vizyon Atistik | Fanal Lantern Workshop with Nathalie Jean-Baptiste
2025-12-06 15:00 - 17:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Join Haitian artist and storyteller host Nathalie Jean-Baptiste at Haiti Cultural Exchange for a hands-on workshop that celebrates the spirit of Haiti’s Christmas season.
Come build your very own fanals, handcrafted paper lanterns that traditionally light up Haitian streets during the holidays. In this guided step-by-step workshop, you will discover the history and cultural significance of these lanterns. What to expect: art exploration, storytelling and tradition coming together in this luminous celebration of community.
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Registration required. $40 registration includes all supplies, light refreshments and beverage.
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nathalie Jean-Baptiste is a Haitian painting artist and creative host. Her artistic and culinary creations often explore the intersection between tradition and innovation, offering a sensory journey rooted in authenticity and cultural pride. While a painter, she is also the founder of an exclusive dining series that celebrates culture, connection, and soulful storytelling through food and art. She takes pride in blending her Haitian heritage with modern sensibilities. Her work reflects themes of identity, spirituality, and human connection through the essence of community and storytelling. As a passionate learner and educator, she proudly completed a residency with the Guggenheim’s Learning Through Art program where experienced teaching artists are placed into New York City public schools to collaborate with classroom teachers to develop, facilitate, and integrate art projects into the school curriculum. Jea-Baptiste’s curiosity fuels her creations and desire to share knowledge through art and experience. Nathalie is also the author of Trogon’s Song of Hope, a children’s book introducing young readers to Haiti’s national bird, the Hispaniolan Trogon.

Bazaar Kreyòl Holiday Marketplace
2025-12-13 12:00 - 20:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Join HCX for Bazaar Kreyòl – our annual holiday marketplace! Purchase unique artwork from the HCX Collection and artisanal Haitian goods for the holidays from a curated array of Haitian vendors.
Saturday, December 13, 2025
12-8pm
35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Celebrate the season by supporting HCX and Haitian artisans and makers. Enjoy a festive afternoon of food, drinks, and music while shopping for a good cause! Take home a unique gift from The HCX Boutik, a specially curated selection of art and artisan craftwork benefiting Haiti Cultural Exchange.
Take a look at the amazing brands joining us at Bazaar Kreyòl this year:
• ARTisANETWORK
• Atelier Mahalia Stines
• Bijou Lakay
• Cantave de Saint Marc Coffee
• Haitian Bae
• KADOKÉLÉ
• Pikliz Please
• Se Lakay
• VB3
• Yoto and Claire

Ti Atis Second Saturdays: Letters & Cloth in Blue: A Cyanotype Workshop with Nica Drice
2025-12-13 14:00 - 16:00 | Brooklyn Children’s Museum, 145 Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11213
Ti Atis returns to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a new season of interactive youth and family programming! Join us this December for a cyanotype Workshop with artist Nica Drice!
Saturday, December 13, 2025
2-4pm
Brooklyn Children’s Museum
145 Brooklyn Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11213
In this hands-on session, families will explore Haitian culture through cyanotype, a sun-printing (UV) process that creates vivid blue images. Using recycled, repurposed materials and natural objects, participants will design paper or fabric inspired by Haitian culture. Each piece becomes a personal keepsake and part of a larger story about memory & heritage.

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About the Artist
Jennica Drice is a Brooklyn-based Haitian artist and designer whose practice bridges textiles, memory, and reuse.
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Attendance free with museum admission. Limited number of free community tickets provided to the HCX community. RSVP below while availability lasts.
Spaces are limited. Purchase a ticket to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum here ».
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About Ti Atis
Ti Atis returns to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a new season of interactive youth and family programming! Ti Atis (Little Artists) engages youth of Haitian descent and their peers with Haitian history and heritage via the arts, giving young people the tools to build an inclusive and culturally informed future as they learn about diverse art forms from professional Haitian artists.
Mark your calendars! Happening on the second Saturday of every month from November 2025 to May 2026.

Mizik Ayiti! Residency Winter Series | Okai Musik
2025-12-18 - 2026-02-05 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Join us on Thursdays for the Mizik Ayiti! Residency Series. The Early Winter residency will be held by composer and multi-instrumentalist Okai Musik.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Okai Musik is a Haitian percussionist, M.C., and producer who has captivated audiences globally with his extraordinary talents. With a deep-rooted passion for rhythm, Okai embarked on his musical journey as a percussionist, mesmerizing and healing listeners with his vibrating beats. His rhythmic expertise has taken him to North, Central, and South America, Japan, and Africa.
His genre expansive career throws original and national rhythm into dancing beat across Hip hop, Afrohouse, Afro-indigenous sound and beyond.
Okai Musik’s six week residency at HCX will feature unique performances weekly, including an album release party, Afrolatino night and solo performances. Join our newsletter to stay up-to-date on these announcements by clicking the link in our footer.

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Dates & Tickets
Get your tickets today and don’t miss on on these incredible performances!
Performances will take place on Thursdays from December 18, 2025 – February 5, 2026 from 6-9pm.
Thursday, December 18 Tickets »
Thursday, January 8 Tickets »
Thursday, January 15 Tickets»
Thursday, January 22 Tickets»
Thursday, January 29 Tickets»
Thursday, February 5 Tickets»
Tickets include a complimentary beverage.
Special pop-up offerings with local Haitian restaurants.
Limited capacity, RSVP strongly recommended.

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About the musician
Okai Musik‘s dedication to his craft knows no bounds. He has immersed himself in the rich tapestry of rhythms from the African diaspora, mastering Bomba on the Barril drum from Puerto Rico, Rumba and Son from Cuba on Congas, Vodou rhythms from Haiti on the Rada and Petwo drums, Cumbia and Bullerengue from Colombia on the Alegre drum, and West African rhythms on the Djembe drum, among others. His passion for exploring and preserving these diverse musical traditions showcases his commitment to honoring and sharing the cultural heritage and history of these communities.
As a talented M.C. and producer, Okai showcases his creativity across many genres. His notable works include the albums “Tonight We Fly” (Afrohouse) from Oyasound, “Dekonstruktion of the Mind” (Hip-Hop), and “Int’l Party” (Regime Change). Collaborating with singers, rappers, and producers, Okai crafts a unique sound that resonates with listeners worldwide. He is also a co-founder and lead vocalist for Strings N Skins, alongside Grammy-winning violinist La Lulu from Colombia, and the lead vocalist of the acclaimed group Brown Rice Family, which won the WNYC 2012 Battle of the Boroughs championship. Okai‘s exceptional talent even led him to perform at the Haitian Ambassador’s Ball in Bogota, Colombia, showcasing his percussion skills to the Colombian government.
In addition to percussion, Okai is a seasoned conch shell player with a decade of experience. Playing the conch shell is a heartfelt ode to his Haitian ancestors and the indigenous Arawak and Taino people of the Caribbean. Through the evocative sounds of the conch shell, Okai ensures that the spirits of his forebears are not forgotten. The conch shell serves as a universal healing instrument, resonating in ceremonies and communication across cultures like India, Tibet, Nepal, Hawaii, and Ancient America. Okai‘s dedication to this ancient art form transcends borders, creating a harmonious bridge between tradition and contemporary expression.
In the realm of dance, Okai‘s rhythmic talents have been sought after by renowned dance ensembles such as Soles of Duende, Bombazo Dance Company, Kimani Fowlin, Renegade Dance Company, and Ase Dance Company. His rhythmic artistry has resonated through prestigious venues like Jacob’s Pillow, Bates Dance Festival, Gibney Dance, The Joyce Theater, Chelsea Factory, Drew University Dance Department, and Mark Morris Dance Company.
In addition to his performance career, Okai is a dedicated teaching artist. He imparts his knowledge through collaborations with NYC-based non-profits, including Little Orchestra, BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Haiti Cultural Exchange, Town Hall, Brooklyn Museum, and the Department of Education. He has facilitated drum and beat-making workshops at Carnegie Hall and Ifetayo, inspiring musicians and fostering a deeper appreciation for percussion and producing. Okai‘s commitment to education and community outreach underscores his role as a cultural ambassador, spreading the joy of music and empowering others through his teachings. https://okaimusik.com/

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HCX | Mizik Ayiti! Residency
HCX positions this invitational residency as an opportunity to innovate and workshop concepts and works-in-progress, showcase new work, and build networks for artists’ future presentation (e.g. booking, touring) at other cultural institutions and stages.
Rarely do artists receive a consistent opportunity to create and share in “real time”–to develop their ideas in a beta form, experiment, and refine amidst presenting publicly. Over the course of 6 weeks, resident artists receive a platform to fine tune approaches, activate jam sessions, and explore sonic possibilities while developing relationships with their audiences.
On Thursday evenings, artist-composers host unique sets joined by a rotation of guest artists and ensembles. Performances offer the opportunity to showcase new work and workshop arrangements across the musical landscape, from traditional genres reverberating the strength of the tanbou to the contemporary sound like fusion jazz and electronic music carrying Haitian vibration into the future.

Ti Atis Second Saturdays: Haitian Heritage Games with Viv Liv Books
2026-01-10 14:00 - 16:00 | Brooklyn Children’s Museum, 145 Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11213
Viv Liv Books’ Justine A. P. Louis brings her amazing collection of Haitian and Caribbean youth books for a special afternoon of learning, making, and play. Learn more about all the traditional games played in Haiti. Then LET’S PLAY! Get hands-on to explore all these new and old games and all the ways we can have fun with our friends.
Saturday, January 10, 2026
2-4pm
Brooklyn Children’s Museum
145 Brooklyn Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11213
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Attendance free with museum admission.
Limited number of free tickets provided to the HCX community.
RSVP below while availability lasts!
Purchase a ticket to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum here ».
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Artist Bio
Justine A. P. Louis is an author, educator, and the founder of VivLiv Books, a publishing company dedicated to celebrating and promoting Caribbean and Haitian culture through diverse, bilingual children’s books. Born in Brooklyn, NY, and raised on the Caribbean island of Haiti, Justine grew up immersed in the vibrant traditions and storytelling heritage of her culture. Listening to engaging Haitian folktales and multicultural stories shared by her family sparked her love for storytelling and writing at a young age.
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About Ti Atis
Ti Atis returns to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a new season of interactive youth and family programming! Ti Atis (Little Artists) engages youth of Haitian descent and their peers with Haitian history and heritage via the arts, giving young people the tools to build an inclusive and culturally informed future as they learn about diverse art forms from professional Haitian artists.
Mark your calendars! Happening on the second Saturday of every month from November 2025 to May 2026.

An n Pale with ALASO #6: Mati [Martyr] Contributors
2026-01-17 18:00 - 21:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
NÈGÈS MAWON and Haiti Cultural Exchange are pleased to host the U.S. launch of ALASO’s sixth issue. This new edition is titled “Mati” (Martyr). ALASO is a trilingual publication in Haitian Creole, French, and English. It serves as a space for feminist expression and dialogue, promoting the production of critical thought, debate, and analysis to make feminist ideas accessible in various formats and modes of dissemination. At the event, the sixth issue of ALASO will be available in both Haitian Creole/French and Haitian Creole/English editions. Previous issues of ALASO will also be available for purchase.
Saturday, January 17, 2026 | 6-9pm
6-7pm: Reception
7pm: An n Pale and Q & A with ALASO #6 contributors
This launch will feature a discussion with:

Gaëlle Bien-Aimé: Writer, actress, and one of the reviewers and translators for ALASO. Her work contributes significantly to the literary and feminist landscape in Haiti through storytelling, humor, and critical thought.
Ana María Belique: Sociologist, activist, and founding leader of Reconocido, a movement mobilizing Dominicans of Haitian descent in the struggle for equality and citizenship rights. Her activism centers on restoring nationality rights to those affected by Ruling 168-13 of the Dominican Constitutional Court (2013) and advancing the social and political empowerment of communities of Haitian descent, especially those living in bateyes.
Pascale Solages: General Coordinator of NÈGÈS MAWON
Fania Noël: Afro Feminist writer, sociologist, and publication director of ALASO.

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About ALASO #6: Mati [Martyr]
“Martyr,” the word gracing this sixth issue of ALASO, is often used to describe a defenseless victim. Here, however, this body of contributors engage the term in its political context. The theme draws from liberation theology—evoking the martyrdom of Jesus—but also from decolonial and Third World liberation movements.
The intention is not to be hyperbolic, avoiding what Hortense Spillers describes as a pornotrope. Instead, throughout this issue, “martyr” becomes an analytical framework to examine lives made indispensable through capitalist, patriarchal, and supremacist exploitation—alongside their resistance, their attachment to the land, and the relationships fiercely targeted by these systems.
This edition inaugurates a new rubric Menm Nou Menm Lan (We Remain), featuring contributions from Black feminists worldwide. The first contribution comes from Sudan: The Noon Collective reflects on the war in Sudan and its connection to global patterns of exploitation, militarization, and anti-Black racism. As in Haiti and the Congo, Sudanese women’s bodies remain sites of ongoing genocide.
The issue also offers a moment of historical reflection with a summary of feminist activist Danièle Magloire’s seminar at CFEGES, revisiting the history of the Haitian feminist movement—a trajectory marked by martyrdom and “martyrization.” It continues with an analysis of anti-Haitianism at the core of Dominican national identity, explored by Ana Belique and grounded in Milagros Ricourt’s work The Dominican Racial Imaginary.
As always, ALASO remains a space for emerging feminist voices, featuring the three winning texts from our open call for contributions: “Our Walls of Wind” by Stéphana Dorval, “In the Border Lespwa” by Katiana Altiné, and “For Eliana!” by Emma Clésca. The issue concludes with an interview with singer Vanessa Jeudi.
Learn more about the ALASO Anthology here »
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About An n Pale
An n Pale | Let’s Talk is an ongoing series of artist talks featuring conversational encounters with artists engaged with issues connected to Haiti and the Diaspora.

Vizyon Atistik: JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval
2026-02-12 - 2026-03-29 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
“I think we all wear some kind of mask. There are masks that shield us from others, but there are masks that embolden us, and you see that in carnival. The shiest child puts on a mask and can do anything and be anybody.”
— Edwidge Danticat, quoted from the book “After the Dance: A Walk Through Jacmel Carnival”

Opening February 12, 2026, Haiti Cultural Exchange, Vizyon Atistik is pleased to present JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval. An exhibition exploring the historical, artistic, and cultural significance of Jacmel’s Carnival in Haiti.
Curated by HCX fellow Yvena Despagne and Executive Director Régine M. Roumain, this exhibition examines Carnival as a vital form of cultural expression and underscores the importance of its history for members of the Haitian diaspora and broader global audiences. Through visual art, mixed media, and cultural storytelling, the exhibition highlights why Jacmel’s Carnival is not only a cornerstone of Haitian cultural identity, but an essential history for the Haitian diaspora to learn, preserve, and pass on.
Renowned worldwide for its elaborate papier-mâché masks, political satire, and community driven artistry, JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval is more than a celebration, it is a living archive of survival stories, memory, and self-expression. Born from Haiti’s revolutionary past and shaped by generations of local artisans, the carnival has long served as a platform for social commentary, collective healing, and cultural pride.

On view from February 12 through March 29
Haiti Cultural Exchange
35 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn, NY

Visit the HCX Gallery to view this exhibition and join the artists & curators at activations taking place as part of this exhibition.
Thur. February 12 | 6-9pm
Opening Reception: Jakmèl: The Unveiling of Kanaval
RSVP Here »
Sat. February 28 | 3-5pm
Papier-mâché Workshop
RSVP Here »

Sat. March 7 | 4-6pm
An n Pale with Steven Baboun, Charles Philippe Jean-Pierre, and Lori Martineau
RSVP Here »

Sat. March 14 | 3-5pm
An n Pale with Tania L. Balan-Gaubert, Bacheler Jean-Pierre, Christina Rateau, and Kedler St-Hilaire (Virtual)
RSVP Here »
Sat. March 28 | 4-6pm
Closing Reception: Jakmèl: The Unveiling of Kanaval
RSVP Here »

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About The Exhibition
JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval tells the story of a people who have always used art as a language of survival and freedom. Migration, displacement, and generational distance have often disrupted the transmission of traditions like Carnival. This exhibition is about honoring that legacy and ensuring it remains visible, especially for those in the diaspora who may feel disconnected from Haiti’s cultural history.
Through paintings, sculptural works, archival materials, and contemporary interpretations, this exhibition bridges past and present, showing how Jacmel’s Carnival continues to influence global art, and political expression while remaining deeply grounded in local community traditions. For the Haitian diaspora, the exhibition emphasizes the urgency of cultural preservation and reclamation. By engaging with Jacmel’s artistic practices and historical narratives, the exhibition encourages diasporic audiences to reconnect with their roots and recognize Carnival as a powerful symbol of identity, and continuity of Haitian culture.

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Featured Artists
Steven Baboun | Website
Steven Baboun is an artist, photographer, and creative director from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, based in New York City. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Film and Media Arts and a minor in Education Studies from American University, as well as a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Parsons School of Design. Baboun works in photography, video, performance, textile + multimedia installation, and design. Currently, Baboun is the founder and creative director of Studio Baboun, a creative house based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the co-founder and CEO of NativRoots Collective, a creative agency specializing in visual production and solutions across entertainment, nonprofits, live experiences, and businesses.
Tania L. Balan-Gaubert | Website
Tania L. Balan-Gaubert is a conceptual artist, cultural producer, and writer based between Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY) and Shikaawa (Chicago, Illinois). Her practice weaves together personal narrative, diasporic memory, and speculative world-building, moving through histories of displacement and survival while honoring practices of belonging.
Born to Haitian parents on the Council of the Three Fires and Miami lands of present-day Illinois, she was raised between Chicago’s South Side and Brooklyn’s Flatlands neighborhood. These geographies continue to shape her artistic practice, which is guided by Haitian, African, and Indigenous traditions. Working across mixed media, installation, photography, painting, and social practice, she assembles found objects, folklore, craft, and spirituality into hybrid forms that move between the material and immaterial. Her work creates spaces where ancestral memory intersects with contemporary experience and where imagination becomes a tool for reclamation and transformation.
Bacheler Jean-Pierre | Website
Miami-based artist Bacheler Jean-Pierre, known for his love of the statement “NOTHING VENTURED NOTHING GAINED”, diversifies self-expression through mediums of music, art, architecture, and fashion. His Caribbean Afro-beat vibe invites you in for a closer look at the personal journey navigating and embracing the essence of an ambitious creative. His creations reveal an intimate rendition of one’s highest self, initiated through strife and strength.
As a survivor of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, Bacheler’s will to live cultivates a continuing freedom to establish uniqueness conveyed in his visionary works. Bacheler’s belief in the power of words speaks to vibrations of expansion and growth. His loyalty to being a student of creation demonstrates the voyages in humility of the shadow self thus validating art as “a reason to triumph” where consciousness evolves.
Charles Jean-Pierre | Website
Charles Philippe Jean-Pierre is a Haitian-American artist groomed on Chicago’s south side. Charles Philippe Jean-Pierre’s most tangible connections to his Haitian roots were the paintings and sculptures in his family’s home. He often overheard passionate debates on abuses of power and continual regression in Haiti, but the art that hung on their walls were beautiful contradictions to his homeland’s hopeless narrative. The stark contradictions of beauty and power, as a theme, are ever-present as a theoretical and methodological struggle within Jean-Pierre’s overall body of work.
His art and work has been featured at many institutions, including the U.S. State Department; the U.S. Embassy in Cotonou, Benin; the Obama White House; The Smithsonian; the Mamelodi Project; and International Monetary Fund. His work has been highlighted by numerous media outlets including: The Washington Post, Ebony Magazine, Black Enterprise, NHK Japan, The Village Voice, BET, NBC, Netflix and FOX. Jean Pierre holds a Masters of Arts from Howard University and has created public art murals in South Africa, Panama, New York, Chicago, Washington, Istanbul, Montreal, Port-au-Prince, London, and Paris. He is currently a professor at Howard University in Fine Arts.
Lori Martineau
Lori Martineau is a writer, aspiring mermaid and creativity junkie. Her professional background is in Education and Expressive Arts Therapy. Born and raised in the Pearl of the Caribbean, her work revolves around a ceaseless curiosity in Haiti’s oral history and cultural traditions. Martieau’s fixation on capturing the tiny pieces of larger stories began with her first camera in her youth documenting the bustling activity of Mache Petyonvil. Martineau was exhilarated by the small moments within the mache’s buzzing activity – piles and piles of merchandise and food, every color, smell, and noise imaginable, and humans moving like foumi fou. She remains fascinated by Haitian culture bearers and her images are a collection of bearing witness to little moments within expansive Kanaval traditions. Lori can be found hopping a flight to soak in water, managing a Haitian restaurant in New Orleans or spending quality time with her home in Haiti.
Christina Rateau | Website
Christina Rateau, born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is a visual artist and photographer based in Amsterdam. With a background in Economics from Donghua University (Shanghai, China), her journey spans modeling, creative direction, and analogue photography, reflecting her passion for storytelling and self-expression. Her practice, Occhio del Ciclone (“The Eye of the Storm”), explores identity, memory, and cultural heritage through conceptual, tactile narratives. Drawing on her Haitian roots and global experiences, Christina crafts evocative works using analogue photography, bold colors, and portraiture, often featuring self-portraits to explore themes personally.
Christina’s work has been featured in Photovogue and The New York Times and debuted her first solo exhibition in 2022 at Studio Baboun. She has also participated in group shows like Our Collective Future at Kunstlinie (Almere, Netherlands) and many other shows in Indianapolis. Committed to preserving Haiti’s cultural heritage, Christina aims to inspire strength and belonging in her audience while empowering the Haitian community and the Black diaspora. Her goal is to serve as a cultural archivist, amplifying Haiti’s stories and traditions for future generations.
Kedler St-Hilaire | Website
Kedler St-Hilaire is a Haitian visual artist and graphic designer whose artistic approach lies at the crossroads of formal rigor and chromatic emotion. A graduate of the École Nationale des Arts (ENARTS), he has developed a singular visual language where line, structure, and color interact. Art is neither decorative nor passive: it is a vital necessity, an act of affirmation and resistance against a world often marked by social and moral bleakness. He is driven by a clear mission: to bring originality, dignity, and meaning to places where degradation prevails.
St-Hilaire trained at the Centre d’Art and continues his artistic research by studying tattoo, enriching his visual and textural vocabulary. St-Hilaire is also an accomplished graphic designer, having collaborated with several leading institutions including CARE Haiti, LEGS ÉDITIONS, FOKAL, the Pyepoudre Cultural Center, the Festival 4 Chemins, La Famille Joseph, and Pascale Théard Créations. Based in Carrefour, St-Hilaire, stands out as a unique voice in the contemporary Haitian art scene, building worlds that are colorful, structured, and profoundly human.
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With sculpture works provided by the Tequila Minsky Private Collection

Vizyon Atistik: OPENING NIGHT | JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval
2026-02-12 18:00 - 21:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
“I think we all wear some kind of mask. There are masks that shield us from others, but there are masks that embolden us, and you see that in carnival. The shiest child puts on a mask and can do anything and be anybody.”
— Edwidge Danticat, quoted from the book “After the Dance: A Walk Through Jacmel Carnival”

Join us for the opening reception of JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval on February 12, 2026, presented by Haiti Cultural Exchange, Vizyon Atistik.
Curated by HCX fellow Yvena Despagne and Executive Director Régine M. Roumain, this exhibition examines Carnival as a vital form of cultural expression and underscores the importance of its history for members of the Haitian diaspora and broader global audiences. Through visual art, mixed media, and cultural storytelling, the exhibition highlights why Jacmel’s Carnival is not only a cornerstone of Haitian cultural identity, but an essential history for the Haitian diaspora to learn, preserve, and pass on.
Renowned worldwide for its elaborate papier-mâché masks, political satire, and community driven artistry, JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval is more than a celebration, it is a living archive of survival stories, memory, and self-expression. Born from Haiti’s revolutionary past and shaped by generations of local artisans, the carnival has long served as a platform for social commentary, collective healing, and cultural pride.

Opening Night, February 12
6–9pm
Haiti Cultural Exchange
35 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn, NY
On view from February 12 through March 29

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About The Exhibition
JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval tells the story of a people who have always used art as a language of survival and freedom. Migration, displacement, and generational distance have often disrupted the transmission of traditions like Carnival. This exhibition is about honoring that legacy and ensuring it remains visible, especially for those in the diaspora who may feel disconnected from Haiti’s cultural history.
Through paintings, sculptural works, archival materials, and contemporary interpretations, this exhibition bridges past and present, showing how Jacmel’s Carnival continues to influence global art, and political expression while remaining deeply grounded in local community traditions. For the Haitian diaspora, the exhibition emphasizes the urgency of cultural preservation and reclamation. By engaging with Jacmel’s artistic practices and historical narratives, the exhibition encourages diasporic audiences to reconnect with their roots and recognize Carnival as a powerful symbol of identity, and continuity of Haitian culture.

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Featured Artists
Steven Baboun | Tania L. Balan-Gaubert | Bacheler Jean-Pierre | Charles Jean-Pierre | Lori Martineau | Christina Rateau | Kedler St. Hilaire
With sculpture works provided by the Tequila Minsky Private Collection

Ti Atis Second Saturdays: Krik? Krak! Haitian Creole Story Time with Jaden Timoun
2026-02-14 14:00 - 16:00 | Brooklyn Children’s Museum, 145 Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11213
In the spirit of oral storytelling that is popular in Haitian culture, Jaden Timoun will engage children and their families in a Krik? Krak! Haitian Creole Story Time session. The afternoon will include singing, movement, and arts & crafts.
Saturday, February 14, 2026
2-4pm
Brooklyn Children’s Museum
145 Brooklyn Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11213
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Attendance free with museum admission.
Limited number of free tickets provided to the HCX community.
RSVP below while availability lasts!
Purchase a ticket to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum here ».
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Artist Bio
Serving children ages 0 to 12, Jaden Timoun is a culturally responsive program which boasts an array of offerings including interactive classes and fun language learning tools such as puzzles accompanied by informational guides and a Jaden Timoun storybook. Jaden Timoun’s Haitian Creole interactive classes include storytelling, dance, movement, singing, arts/crafts, games, guest artists, and diverse resources shared with families for extended learning outside of the Jaden Timoun space. From private sessions to group classes to parent consultations on bilingualism Jaden Timoun has something to fit every family’s language learning needs.
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About Ti Atis
Ti Atis returns to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a new season of interactive youth and family programming! Ti Atis (Little Artists) engages youth of Haitian descent and their peers with Haitian history and heritage via the arts, giving young people the tools to build an inclusive and culturally informed future as they learn about diverse art forms from professional Haitian artists.
Mark your calendars! Happening on the second Saturday of every month from November 2025 to May 2026.

Mizik Ayiti! Residency Winter Series | Mikaëlle Aimée
2026-02-19 - 2026-03-26 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Join us on Thursdays for the Mizik Ayiti! Residency Series. The Winter residency will be held by Haitian-American singer-songwriter Mikaëlle Aimée.
Mikaëlle Aimée is a New York–based musician who brings jazz, folk, soul, and vibrant Haitian musical traditions to life through her voice and guitar.
Mikaëlle Aimée’s six week residency at HCX will feature unique performances weekly.
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Dates & Tickets
Get your tickets today and don’t miss out on these incredible performances!
Performances will take place on Thursdays from February 19, 2026–March 26, 2026, 6-9pm.
Get your tickets to one, or all these performances, here »
Tickets include a complimentary beverage.
Special pop-up offerings with local Haitian restaurants.
Limited capacity, RSVP strongly recommended.
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About the musician
Mikaëlle Aimée is a Haitian-American singer-songwriter based in New York. She sings and plays guitar and has become known for her dazzling performance styles ranging from Jazz, Folk, Soul, and across Haitian musical genres.
Mikaëlle Aimée first debuted on the Haitian Music scene in 2009 where she began performing regularly for the variety shows Ayiti Deploge, and Havana Guitar Night. She also participated heavily in the Port-au-Prince Jazz music scene between 2010 and 2014.
As lead singer of the jazz band Kayel, Mikaëlle Aimée held residence at the well-known Quartier Latin in Pétion-Ville, Haiti from 2010 to 2013.
She also hosted the popular television show “Metro Night” on Haiti’s Tele Metropole station between 2012 and 2014.
Mikaëlle’s journey took an unexpected pivot when she found herself stranded in the US, in Summer 2014, due to passport complications. As luck would have it, the travel delays would be the catalyst that jumpstarted her music career here in the US.
She quickly plugged into the Haitian Jazz community and eventually joined some New York-based ensembles. She would later participate in the 2018 Apollo Theater Amateur Night, where she reached the semi-finals, marking her first major accomplishment on US soil.
Her musical pursuits have taken her throughout the 5 boroughs, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Miami and Atlanta. Her international performances include Spain, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic.
Mikaëlle Aimée released the soulful ballad “Lay me Down” in 2019 and Kreyol Funk tune, “Adye” in 2021.
She is currently in the process of completing her first EP “Hope in Disguise”, with Queens based Producer Gurpal X, and is also working towards the release of several tracks in Haitian Creole.
In 2025, she created “Soirée Sérénade”, a compilation of Haitian traditional and folk music, french chansonettes, jazz and bossa nova. It serves as a representation of what would be popular on the radio when she was a child. The purpose of this show is to unite Haitians with a voyage through time, a bit of nostalgia for the exiled.
For more information or booking, please contact Mikaëlle Aimée at MikaelleAimee@gmail.com or visit her on Instagram @MikaelleAimee
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HCX | Mizik Ayiti! Residency
HCX positions this invitational residency as an opportunity to innovate and workshop concepts and works-in-progress, showcase new work, and build networks for artists’ future presentation (e.g. booking, touring) at other cultural institutions and stages.
Rarely do artists receive a consistent opportunity to create and share in “real time”–to develop their ideas in a beta form, experiment, and refine amidst presenting publicly. Over the course of 6 weeks, resident artists receive a platform to fine tune approaches, activate jam sessions, and explore sonic possibilities while developing relationships with their audiences.
On Thursday evenings, artist-composers host unique sets joined by a rotation of guest artists and ensembles. Performances offer the opportunity to showcase new work and workshop arrangements across the musical landscape, from traditional genres reverberating the strength of the tanbou to the contemporary sound like fusion jazz and electronic music carrying Haitian vibration into the future.

Haiti Film Fest Pop Up | The Forgotten Occupation: Jim Crow Goes to Haiti
2026-02-20 18:00 - 21:00 | Brooklyn Children’s Museum, 145 Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11213
Haiti Cultural Exchange and the team behind “The Forgotten Occupation: Jim Crow Goes to Haiti” present a special community screening of this pivotal documentary followed by a discussion with filmmaker Alain Martin.
Friday, February 20, 2026
Doors: 6:00pm
Screening: 6:30pm
The Brooklyn Children’s Museum Theater
145 Brooklyn Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11213
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FREE
Donations welcome
Registration required.
Follow this link to RSVP on Eventbrite »
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About the Film
100 years after the Haitian Revolution, the people of Haiti find themselves once again having to defend their liberty, this time against a powerful neighbor: the United States.
What happens when the oppressor becomes your salvation? Through a letter to his grandfather, a Haitian filmmaker revisits the U.S. occupation of Haiti, unraveling the paradox of a man who longed for American rule and a nation scarred by it. Blending intimate memory with sweeping history, the film confronts exile, love, and the uneasy truths at the heart of freedom.
Directed by Haitian filmmaker Alain Martin and executive produced by New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist).
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About HCX | Haiti Film Fest Pop Up Series
This special film screening is part of the Haiti Film Fest Pop Up Series offering more intimate opportunities to engage with the filmmakers and deepen connection to the themes explored on screen.
Haiti Film Fest is the only New York City film festival devoted to Haiti-focused cinema and Haitian filmmakers. Launched in 2011, the festival screens motion pictures in many genres and formats, ranging from documentary shorts to extended narrative film. Presenting these films to a broad audience, Haiti Film Fest is also an opportunity for the Haitian community to see itself represented in this vital and prevalent medium.

This event is presented in collaboration & with support from the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Diaspora Community Services, Kinfolk Tech, the Fund for Haitian Women, and NYC Council Member Rita Joseph.

Vizyon Atistik | Papier-mâché Workshop with David Sainté
2026-02-28 15:00 - 17:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
In this participatory workshop, join artist David Sainté to learn methods of mask making and why Jacmel’s Carnival is not only a cornerstone of Haitian cultural identity, but an essential history for the Haitian diaspora to learn, preserve, and pass on.
Each participant will receive a pre-made mask to decorate with demonstrated techniques , a complementary beverage, & light refreshments.
This event is part of the Vizyon Atistik public programming for JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval on view until March 29, 2026.

Saturday, February 28
3–5pm
Haiti Cultural Exchange
35 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn, NY

RSVP required. Limited Capacity.
Get your tickets here »

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About The Exhibition
JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval is more than a celebration, it is a living archive of survival stories, memory, and self-expression.
Learn more about the exhibition and artists here »
Join the artists & curators for other activations taking place as part of this exhibition »

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About the Instructor
David Sainté is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and interdisciplinary visual artist of Haitian descent whose work bridges experimental documentary, installation, and new media. His practice merges archival footage, video, and sculptural environments with emerging technologies to create immersive, narrative-driven experiences that explore memory, grief, and cultural identity.
His recent work includes Bedsheet Bunker, presented in Oslo as part of Nou La: Apertures into Haiti at Kunstnernes Hus, alongside Jelsen Lee Innocent’s exhibition Truth Has No Friends in The West. The generative film explores Haiti’s artistic legacy and diaspora through themes of spirituality, resilience, and resistance, situating Haitian voices within global contemporary discourse.
Another cornerstone of his practice is Nou Mache lè Solèy Kouche, a part-sculptural, part-generative documentary installation supported by the En Foco Media Arts Fund and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Originally intended for the Ghetto Biennale in Jacmel, the project was left without a home after the event was cancelled due to the crisis in Haiti. The installation has continued to evolve in Sainté’s studio, weaving light, film, and memory with car parts, sequin fabrics, found objects, and glowing masks that evoke Jacmel’s Kanaval traditions and ancestral memory.
Sainté’s broader projects have been supported by institutions such as The Shed, MIT, the MUD Foundation in Miami’s Little Haiti, the Museum of the Moving Image, where he has developed XR environments, sound, and experimental moving image installations.

Vizyon Atistik | An n Pale with Steven Baboun, Charles Philippe Jean-Pierre, and Lori Martineau
2026-03-07 16:00 - 18:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Join this in-person conversation with featured artists of the current exhibition Jakmèl: The Unveiling of Kanaval on view now in the HCX: Steven Baboun, Charles Philippe Jean-Pierre, and Lori Martineau.
This event is part of the Vizyon Atistik public programming for JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval on view until March 29, 2026.
Saturday, March 7
4–6pm
Haiti Cultural Exchange
35 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn, NY
Limited capacity, RSVP strongly suggested.
Seating first come, first served.
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About The Exhibition
JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval is more than a celebration, it is a living archive of survival stories, memory, and self-expression.
Learn more about the exhibition and artists here »
Join the artists & curators for other activations taking place as part of this exhibition »

Ti Atis Second Saturdays: Haitian Folkloric Dance with Robenson Mathurin
2026-03-14 14:00 - 16:00 | Brooklyn Children’s Museum, 145 Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11213
Through music, rhythm, and creative play, families will learn the basics of Haitian folkloric dance while discovering the stories and meanings behind each step. This Ti Atis dance class will nurture self-expression, cooperation, and cultural pride, helping children connect with Haiti’s spirit of resilience and joy in a fun and supportive environment. Led by caring and experienced teaching artist Robenson Mathurin, families will dance, learn, and celebrate together—honoring their heritage while creating something new.
Saturday, March 14, 2026
2-4pm
Brooklyn Children’s Museum
145 Brooklyn Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11213
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Attendance free with museum admission.
Limited number of free tickets provided to the HCX community.
RSVP below while availability lasts!
Purchase a ticket to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum here »
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Artist Bio
Robenson Mathurin is a New York–based dancer, choreographer, and teacher who shares the beauty and spirit of Haitian culture through dance. Trained in many styles and having performed around the world, he continues to teach and inspire students of all ages. In 2022, he founded NANM, his own dance company, which uses movement and storytelling to celebrate Haitian traditions, honor personal stories, and bring families and communities together through the joy of dance.
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About Ti Atis
Ti Atis returns to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a new season of interactive youth and family programming! Ti Atis (Little Artists) engages youth of Haitian descent and their peers with Haitian history and heritage via the arts, giving young people the tools to build an inclusive and culturally informed future as they learn about diverse art forms from professional Haitian artists.
Mark your calendars! Happening on the second Saturday of every month from November 2025 to May 2026.

Vizyon Atistik | An n Pale with Steven Baboun, Tania L. Balan-Gaubert, Bacheler Jean-Pierre, Christina Rateau, and Kedler St-Hilaire (Virtual)
2026-03-14 15:00 - 17:00 | NY
Join this virtual conversation with featured artists of the current exhibition Jakmèl: The Unveiling of Kanaval on view now in the HCX: Steven Baboun, Tania L. Balan-Gaubert, Bacheler Jean-Pierre, Christina Rateau, and Kedler St-Hilaire.
This event is part of the Vizyon Atistik public programming for JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval on view until March 29, 2026.
Saturday, March 14
3–5pm
Virtual. Register for the webinar here »
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About The Exhibition
JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval is more than a celebration, it is a living archive of survival stories, memory, and self-expression.
Learn more about the exhibition and artists here »
Join the artists & curators for other activations taking place as part of this exhibition »

Vizyon Atistik | Closing Reception: Jakmèl: The Unveiling of Kanaval
2026-03-28 16:00 - 18:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Kanaval season wraps at HCX! Join artists and curators for a special night of rara, light refreshments and a last look at Jakmèl: The Unveiling of Kanaval. Special performance by Bacheler Jean-Pierre.
This event is part of the Vizyon Atistik public programming for JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval on view until March 29, 2026.
Saturday, March 28
4–6pm
Haiti Cultural Exchange
35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn NY
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About The Exhibition
JAKMÈL | The Unveiling of Kanaval is more than a celebration, it is a living archive of survival stories, memory, and self-expression.
Learn more about the exhibition and artists here »
Join the artists & curators for other activations taking place as part of this exhibition »

An n Pale | Mini-Jazz: An Immigration Story with Hervé Sabin
2026-03-29 14:00 - 19:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
In this interactive salon, reimagine the classic Haitian immigrant living room: sofas covered in squeaky plastic protecting the fabric below, the ceramic decorations and the photo albums and the China and the bars with Rhum Barbancourt, crémas, Manischewitz, and tranpe lined up in a neat row. In the corner of the room: a record player.
Scholar, archivist, and artist Hervé Sabin brings us together to reminisce on iconic musical genres of mini-jazz and konpa direk and how they made their way to Brooklyn in our suitcases, bals, and right here in recording studios across the US.
For this session, serenade us with your memories of Haitian mini-jazz as we listen to vinyls from the Ace Frape collection of Jean H. Marcelin and Hervé Sabin’s inherited collections from Montreal, New York, Miami, and Port-au-Prince.
Patrice Espérant joins as the afternoon’s DJ to keep the vinyl spinning!
We welcome you to sit a while, listen to a few of iconic albums, and share stories of home – old and new.
Sunday, March 29, 2026
2-7pm
Haiti Cultural Exchange
35 Lafayette Ave BK, NY 11217
2pm: Welcome & Flip through Marcelin & Sabin’s Records Archive. Sign up to share your Mini-Jazz music memory!
2:30pm: Story Sharing with Hervé Sabin & Patrice Espérant
3-7pm: Community Story Sharing Cycles
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About Orchestre et Mini-Jazz: An Immigration Story Through Music by Hervé Sabin
During the late sixties compas direct/konpa direk which was founded in July 1955 by Nemours Jean-Baptiste* began transforming from a big band orchestra format to a more compact unit of five to eight members called Mini-Jazz. To this very day most Haitians refer to a compas band as jazz la or the Jazz!
The bands developed structures and distinct sounds. The typical instruments were electric guitars, bass, drums, keyboard, and sometimes brass instruments like saxophones and trumpets. The electric guitar was dominant with intricate solos. Mini-Jazz retained Compas’ distinctive rhythm of steady beat and syncopated bass lines, played at a faster tempo danceable groove.
They were from various neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince and other Haitian cities. In Port-au-Prince, certain bands were known as king of their neighborhood: Les Shleu Shleu were in Bas-Peu-de-Chose; Les Fantaisistes were from Carrefour; in Petionville the bands Les Difficiles which became Les Gypsies, Tabou Combo which was born from Los Incognitos, Les Frères Dejean, Choupa Choupa all dominated the hills of Carrefour Feuille.
The early seventies saw many bands emigrating to the United States in parallel with the great migration spurred by the entrenchment of the Duvalier regime. They settled predominantly in the northeast where Tabou Combo had established itself and became an international superstar (even adding Superstars to the name of the band). They did it with hits such as “New York City”, “Juicy Lucy”, “Chercher la Femme” and “Let’s Dance” which married funk, early hip hop, and Compas to create a hybrid sound representing the era. The city of Boston hatched Volo Volo de Boston and Djet-X, both products of migration.
Here in New York City, Prospect-Lefferts, Flatbush and Crown Heights became the epicenter of the Haitian migration. Franklin, Nostrand, and Flatbush Avenues became the hubs where many record labels erected domicile. Geronimo records, Marc records, Mini Records and Fred Paul were the big players. Albert Chancy from Tabou Combo started Chancy Records which became at one point the label for the band.
This project looks to tell the parallel stories of a musical genre, its transformation along stories of migration that transformed neighborhoods in cities on both sides of the Atlantic in the US and Haiti. It looks at the lives of Haitian in the US and Haiti, particularly their connections to the music and how Haitian urbanism was been shaped by political and economic immigration.
*The famous Sicot vs Nemours konpa direk origin story battles with Sicot developing a nuanced merengue style called Cadence or Cadence Rampa and Nemours having created a more direct 1,2 rhythm.

Ti Atis Second Saturdays: Printmaking & Storytelling with Nathalie Jean-Baptiste
2026-04-11 14:00 - 16:00 | Brooklyn Children’s Museum, 145 Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11213
Haitian artist and storyteller Nathalie Jean-Baptiste leads this engaging children’s workshop combining storytelling, live music, and hands-on artmaking. The program begins with a reading of Trogon’s Song of Hope accompanied by live drumming. In the story, we meet Trogon, the national bird of Haiti and his new friends.
Then, take part in a simple block printing workshop inspired by the birds, foliage, and natural themes. Using various materials—styrofoam plates, pencils, and paint—children create their own prints while learning the basics of printmaking. This workshop encourages imagination, creativity, and sensory engagement through story, rhythm, and art.
Saturday, April 11, 2026
2-4pm
Brooklyn Children’s Museum
145 Brooklyn Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11213
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Attendance free with museum admission.
Limited number of free tickets provided to the HCX community.
RSVP below while availability lasts!
Purchase a ticket to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum here »
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Artist Bio
Nathalie Jean-Baptiste is a Haitian painter and creative host whose work blends tradition and innovation through art and curated dining experiences. Rooted in cultural pride, her creations explore identity, spirituality, and human connection, celebrating Haitian heritage with a modern touch. She is the founder of an exclusive dining series centered on culture and storytelling, a former Guggenheim Learning Through Art resident teaching artist in NYC public schools, and the author of Trogon’s Song of Hope, a children’s book about Haiti’s national bird, the Hispaniolan Trogon.
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About Ti Atis
Ti Atis returns to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a new season of interactive youth and family programming! Ti Atis (Little Artists) engages youth of Haitian descent and their peers with Haitian history and heritage via the arts, giving young people the tools to build an inclusive and culturally informed future as they learn about diverse art forms from professional Haitian artists.
Mark your calendars! Happening on the second Saturday of every month from November 2025 to May 2026.

HCX Salon d’Ayiti Book Club | Hadriana in All My Dreams by René Depestre Hosted by Kaiama L. Glover
2026-04-15 - 2026-05-09 | Virtual
This April, 𝗐𝖾 𝗐𝗂𝗅𝗅 read the English translation of Hadriana in All My Dreams by René Depestre in conversation with the novel’s translator Kaiama L. Glover, prizewinning translator and professor of Black Studies and French at Yale University.
Professor Glover will lead three virtual sessions in April as well as a closing in-person meet-up and lunch on May 9 at Salon d’Ayiti hosted by Haiti Cultural Exchange and the Center for Fiction in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
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About Hadriana in All My Dreams by René Depestre
Winner of the 1988 Prix Renaudot, Hadriana dans tous mes rêves is widely considered René Depestre’s finest novel. Set during 1938 Carnival in the Haitian village of Jacmel, it follows Hadriana, a young French woman who collapses at the altar after drinking a mysterious potion, is transformed into a zombie, buried, revived by a sorcerer, and vanishes into legend. The story is narrated first by her adoring god-brother Patrick, then — in a hilarious corrective — by Hadriana herself, whose account exposes the hidden sensuality beneath her bourgeois community’s respectable surface.
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JOIN THE CONVERSATION WITH KAIAMA L. GLOVER
Discussion to be held in multi-part virtual sessions:
Virtual; meeting link shared after registration. Readers are welcome to join mid-way through the session if they get started late.
Session 1: April 15, 6-7pm ET
Foreword + Movement 1, Chapters 1-2
Session 2: April 22, 6-7pm ET
Movement 1, Chapters 3-4
Session 3: April 29, 6-7pm ET
Movement 2

CHANGED!
In-person lunch meet-up for virtual session attendees:
May 9, 1-3pm
May 13, Virtually
Movement 3 + Epilogue
All registered attendees of the book club will receive details for the virtual meeting via email.
Special conversation and staged reading following the meet-up with Kaiama L. Glover, Edwidge Danticat, and guests: Salon d’Ayiti: A Living Tribute to René Depestre.
$10-$30 Suggested donation includes access to all sessions.
If you are in NY, you can purchase the book, Hadriana in All My Dreams with our partners over at the Center For Fiction. Learn more about visiting their bookstore, here »
RSVP on Eventbrite while availability lasts! »

Mizik Ayiti! Residency Spring Series | Twoubadou Lakay
2026-04-16 - 2026-05-14 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Join us on Thursdays for the Mizik Ayiti! Residency Series. The Spring residency will be held by Twoubadou Lakay.
Twoubadou Lakay is a collective of master musicians rooted in the rich traditions of Haitian music. The ensemble blends the storytelling spirit and dancing guitars of Haitian Twoubadou with deep Haitian rhythms, jazz sensibilities, and improvisational dialogue. Twoubadou Lakay is tradition reimagined through a contemporary lens. Their sound is both intimate and expansive—grounded in lakou culture, yet reaching across the diaspora—creating a musical space where heritage, memory, and innovation meet.
Twoubadou Lakay’s Haiti Cultural Exchange residency will feature core members Bobby Raymond, Markus Schwartz, Gary Josama, Gama Josama, Joe Montour, Camille Hostin and Roland Cameau in revolving formations. Twoubadou Lakay invites audiences into a living, breathing experience of Haitian musical expression—honoring the past while shaping its future.
Twoubadou Lakay’s five-week residency at HCX will feature unique performances weekly.
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Dates & Tickets
Get your tickets today and don’t miss out on these incredible performances!
Performances will take place on Thursdays April 16, 23, 30 and May 7 and 14, 2026.
6-9pm
Get your tickets to one, or all these performances, here »
Tickets include a complimentary beverage.
Special pop-up offerings from Bon Pâtés.
Limited capacity, RSVP strongly recommended.
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HCX | Mizik Ayiti! Residency
HCX positions this invitational residency as an opportunity to innovate and workshop concepts and works-in-progress, showcase new work, and build networks for artists’ future presentation (e.g. booking, touring) at other cultural institutions and stages.
Rarely do artists receive a consistent opportunity to create and share in “real time”–to develop their ideas in a beta form, experiment, and refine amidst presenting publicly. Over the course of 6 weeks, resident artists receive a platform to fine tune approaches, activate jam sessions, and explore sonic possibilities while developing relationships with their audiences.
On Thursday evenings, artist-composers host unique sets joined by a rotation of guest artists and ensembles. Performances offer the opportunity to showcase new work and workshop arrangements across the musical landscape, from traditional genres reverberating the strength of the tanbou to the contemporary sound like fusion jazz and electronic music carrying Haitian vibration into the future.

ON VIEW | Vizyon Atistik | What Paper Remembers: Marks, Memory and Labor
2026-04-25 - 2026-06-07 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Opening April 25, What Paper Remembers: Marks, Memory and Labor, is an exhibition of works on paper by women artists across generations, presented by Curatorial Fellow Yvena Despagne and Executive Director Régine M. Roumain.
Through drawing, printmaking, collage, and mixed media, the exhibition considers paper as a material that carries memory, labor, and cultural continuity. Paper absorbs gesture records pressure and hesitation, time, revision and return, while holding traces of the hand and the persistence of ideas. Centering practices shaped by embodied knowledge and movement across place, the exhibition affirms paper not as a provisional surface, but as one that remembers and endures.
This exhibition draws on traditions of storytelling and record-keeping shaped through movement and change, where each work reflects acts of preservation. Paper bears the imprint of the hand that shaped it while holding memory with remarkable precision. The artists position paper as a deliberate and enduring space in which lived experience is carried forward, and where marks serve as witnesses to time. Across varied practices, the works reveal how meaning emerges through layering, removal, and touch, shifting paper from a neutral ground into an active agent in the inscription and formation of memory.
Moving between intimacy and assertion, the exhibition brings forward practices long positioned at the margins while emphasizing their conceptual and material force. Here, paper holds thought, labor, and lived experience, sustaining what might otherwise fade. It absorbs touch even as it carries personal and cultural histories, insisting on its role as both record and witness.
An opening reception, panel discussions, and community workshop will further explore the craftsmanship of working with paper and its preservation of memory and time.
On view from April 25 through June 7
Thursday – Sunday, Wednesday by appointment.
Haiti Cultural Exchange
35 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn, NY

Visit the HCX Gallery to view this exhibition and join the artists & curators at activations taking place as part of this exhibition.
Sat. April 25 | 6-9pm
Opening Reception
RSVP Here »
Sat. May 2 | 4-6pm
An n Pale with Exhibiting Artists
RSVP Here »

Sun. Jun 7 | 2-4pm
Collage Workshop with Mel Isidor
RSVP Here »
Sun. Jun 7 | 4-7pm
Closing Reception
RSVP Here »

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Featured Artists
Sally Yolaine Binard | Website
Sally Binard is an Atlanta based multidisciplinary artist whose work examines history and identity through vivid color, composition, and an unmistakable sense of place.
Her practice spans painting, sculpture, and installation. Informed by her childhood in the Caribbean and her life in Key West, her work explores stories that shape individuals and communities. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including group exhibitions such as Black Creativity at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and Underneath Everything: Humility and Grandeur in Contemporary Ceramics at the Des Moines Art Center and the Grand Rapids Art Museum. Her work has also been included in publications such as Ceramics Monthly.
Her commissioned public works include Bounty of Plantation Key, created for the Plantation Key Courthouse and a project for the Frederick Douglass Community Center, honoring the legacy of the Bahamian Black community in Bahama Village, Key West.
Binard’s artwork and story have been featured in Forbes.com, the Florida Slave Trade Documentation and Education Center’s online archive, reviewed in Hyperallergic, and appeared in multiple CBS productions. She is the recipient of the Kaabo Clay Collective Award, a CERF+ grant, and the 2021 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship.
Artist Statement
I am a mixed-media artist of Haitian and Belgian heritage, drawing inspiration from the vibrant traditions of Haitian art and the classical influence of Dutch painters. This cultural duality shapes my work, merging classical techniques with rich, colorful storytelling.
Working primarily with oils, clay, and wood, I create portraits and installations that distill personal and social themes into visual narratives. My paintings transform human experiences into a poignant visual language, layered with symbolism.
Rooted in literature, history, and research, I look to the past to better understand and navigate the present—both my own and that of the people I portray. In this way, my art becomes a bridge, connecting historical narratives and personal experiences with modern identities.

Ani Brutus | Website
Ani Brutus is an interdisciplinary artist of Haitian-Filipino descent who works across print, painting, textiles, and assemblage. Using found fabrics, everyday objects, and family archives, she creates layered works that explore ancestry, memory, and spirituality. Inspired by Vodou and sacred geometry, her practice transforms discarded materials into tactile pieces that reflect personal and communal histories.
Brutus treats everyday items as relics carrying traces of touch and experience, assembling them into textured, organic forms. Through techniques like cyanotype, woodcut, and painting, she layers imagery of ancestors, cultural symbols, and her surroundings to create works that exist at a “crossroads” of material and spiritual forces. Her work emphasizes connection across time, honoring ancestral presence while reimagining the meaning of the ordinary.
Ani Brutus has exhibited with Haiti Cultural Exchange, Studio 45, Blue Print Archives at Moda Curations, Black Girls Sew at the Textile Arts Center, and Push-Up Gallery.
Artist Statement:
In Vodou, spirit inhabits everything—animals, objects, infrastructure and beyond—binding us across time and geography. I am drawn to imprints of routine, like the indentations in a seat cushion or the wear of a well-loved hair-clip. My practice begins with the engagement of everyday materials and the observation of their forms. At the base of my work, I create textural surfaces through the assemblage of found domestic fabric and discarded commonplace items. I work with items like keys, toothbrushes, old curtains and clothespins. I regard each material as a relic, carrying traces of touch, memory, and connection. Together they form a portrait of my lifestyle. Each assemblage is mounted onto organically-shaped bases that are prone to weathering. I work with foamcore, paper, unstretched canvas and tattered fabrics. My work honors the material from which they came, while reimagining their role through cycles of change.

Jennica Drice | Website
Jennica Drice, born in Brooklyn and raised in Port-au-Prince, is a textile artist working with indigo and cyanotype. Her practice is rooted in cultural memory, migration, and diasporic inheritance, using blue as her primary material language. She began her creative practice with Kaymanmzel, a sustainable fashion project built around recycled textiles. Drawn to transformation, she later turned to cyanotype, using the process to move images and materials between states and rework them into new forms. Her work explores personal and communal archives, asking what culture preserves, how it travels, and what form it assumes upon arrival.
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows including Between Us at Haul Gallery where she completed a residency, First Hand at Zepster Gallery, Soft Structures at Makers Ensemble, and Migration Stories at Fulton Art Fair Gallery.
Artist Statement
I work in blue. Indigo, cyanotype, denim, cotton. Blue is both language and landscape to me. It holds mourning and freedom, ceremony and survival. Across Haitian Vodou shrines, Muslim tiles, and Catholic robes, blue is often understood as a sacred color, one that summons and protects whatever realm holds your belief.
I grew up one of six girls among seven cousins. Hand-me-downs weren’t just clothes; they were culture. A tutu or Victorian dress passed from body to body carried traces of each celebration, each season of wear. That rhythm taught me care and transformation, how to find beauty in what already existed. Kaymanmzel, my sustainable fashion project, continues that lineage, reworking discarded materials into garments that hold memory and possibility.
That same understanding of objects as carriers of history took root early. My grandparents’ house in Port-au-Prince had vivid blue walls that soaked up the sun. I lived there until I was twelve. From the open balcony I watched funeral processions, listened to Rara bands, heard vendors calling out their own makeshift jingles. Blue was always there, painted on walls, woven through memory, alive in gesture, song, and ceremony.
I return to it again and again.

Mel Isidor | Website
Mel Isidor is a Haitian-American mixed-media artist, designer, and urban planner based between Seattle, WA, and Boston, MA. Her work draws inspiration from the built environment, exploring how cities reveal the relationship between people and culture. Mel holds a Master’s in City Planning from MIT and a B.A. in Urban Studies from Brown University—a foundation that brings a philosophical and analytical lens to her practice, shaping both how she sees the world and how she translates that understanding through to her compositions. Her artistic practice combines photography and collage to create layered compositions that merge realism and abstraction—physically and metaphorically connecting different moments in time and space. Using imagery from her own photography, family archives, and public records, she builds scenes grounded in memory and heritage that reimagine familiar geographies through a speculative lens.
Mel also leads Isidor Studio, her design practice dedicated to the intersections of art, design, and urbanism. Across both her art and studio work, she transforms research and observation into visual narratives that deepen our understanding of place and the everyday materiality that shapes it. Her work has been exhibited across the United States through galleries and public installations in Boston, Seattle, and New Orleans, and she has been invited to speak on her creative practice at institutions including Adobe, Yale University, and the University of Southern California.
Artist Statement
Roots is a photo collage series capturing vignettes from reconnecting with my family and the landscape in Haiti. Each is a one-of-one handmade collage made with paper and foil, assembling fragments from landscaped to lived spaces. By layering imagery from my personal photography and family archives, these works document Haiti’s landscape into new forms that exist between memory and imagination. The fragmented compositions reflect how a place holds multiple stories at once, showing how histories are embedded in the built environment and culture is visible in physical form.
Each piece operates as a threshold where temporal boundaries dissolve, drawing the viewer into a winding passage between what was, what is, and what might be. The collages resist a single timeline, with fragments from different moments placed in relation to one another so that time appears all at once, disorienting any fixed sense of where a scene belongs. A recurring motif in my work is the incorporation of mirrored elements that draw the audience into the frame, transforming each piece from a snapshot of the past toward an augmented reality that reminds viewers they are part of the work they are observing.

Nathalie Jean-Baptiste | Website
Nathalie Jean-Baptiste, is a Haitian artist, storyteller, and cultural influencer whose artwork evokes emotion in its rawest form. Her paintings, through bold colors and intimate portraits, transform loneliness into beauty and human vulnerability into strength. Her gift for portraiture and translation of emotion also led her to use her Haitian heritage and curiosity for traditional cooking as her palette, turning the act of hosting into an art form of its own. Everything she creates is a reflection of her home, her family history, her inner world and the women who live within it.
Nathalie’s curiosity fuels her creations and her desire to share knowledge through art and experience. A passionate learner and educator, Nathalie proudly completed a residency with the Guggenheim’s Learning Through Art program where experienced teaching artists are placed into New York City public schools to collaborate with classroom teachers to develop, facilitate, and integrate art projects into the school curriculum.
Artist Statement
As a Haitian painter and storyteller my work lives at the intersection of memory, survival, and transformation. I use painting as a storytelling tool that helps carry what the body and the mind remember when words fall short.
Underground is part of a series of works on paper, created in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. These pieces emerged first as unspoken emotions while I was locked in transit, in a space between devastation and safety. They are traces of a raw, fragmented memory on my paper that is only an attempt to process what felt ungraspable at the time.
In a country shaped by many legacies, documentation is not always entrusted to official archives. Instead, the everyday push and pull, lived in alternative forms: handwritten texts, religious drawings, and coded visual language.
My relationship to paper is rare, yet the material has found itself deeply rooted in my daily-life heritage, where it carried visible aging notes: folded book corners, dog-eared bibles, scarred birth certificates. These gradual ephemeral markings transform paper into a living archive activated through touch, storage and display.
Paper is testimony. Paper is our first form of memory storage. Haiti’s everyday life documentation, political struggle, and collective memory…particularly during times when histories were threatened with erasure, all gave purpose to paper. Similarly, in my practice, paper is not passive. It absorbs and remembers as it becomes a witness to both the visible and the unspeakable.
Through this layered series of emotional abstraction, I traced internal landscapes shaped by an immeasurable trauma, resilience, and survival.
Rooted in my Haitian heritage, my work is informed by spirituality, identity, and human connection. I am interested in how we carry history within our bodies, and how creation, whether through painting, food, or gathering—becomes a ritual of release and restoration. Everything I create is an extension of home, of lineage, and of the women whose strength lives within me.
In this body of work, paper holds what I survived. It becomes both archive and offering, a space where personal memory meets collective history, and where the act of marking becomes an act of survival, remembrance, and, ultimately, salvation.

Rejin Leys | Website
For more than three decades I have been working on and with paper. My mixed media drawings reflect my interest in social and global issues in improvisational and playful ways. But since incorporating papermaking into my practice, I have found myself becoming more interested in it as a material than a drawing surface. This has led to projects that exploit the sculptural possibilities of paper pulp. Using mostly recycled paper and casting from different molds, surfaces, and objects, I can address the issues that concern me in ways that are new to me and challenge me both technically and aesthetically.
Recent cast paper projects reflect my concern about climate change by focusing on New York as a city of water; explore how our history is written right into the built environment; or personalize our pandemic era awareness of the importance of caregivers by sharing my late father’s tools. Some of these projects began with public, interactive papermaking events that led me to spend time on deeper exploration of ideas, processes, and forms. They address broader concerns while focusing on place and community.
Artist Statement
Rejin Leys is a Haitian-American mixed media artist and papermaker based in New York. She has exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, and her work is included in several public collections including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Yale University, Rutgers University Caribbean Studies Department, and the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam). Leys is a recipient of a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from Brooklyn College.

Julie Rouzier Mevs
Julie Rouzier Mevs is a Haitian mixed-media artist born in Port-au-Prince in 1986. Her work explores memory, identity, and cultural transmission through the lens of Haitian folk traditions, oral histories, and spiritual practices.
She studied Visual Communication at l’École de Condé in Lyon, France, and later trained with Haitian-Italian photographer Roberto Stephenson, whose mentorship helped shape her visual language and approach to storytelling.
From 2009 to 2015, she worked as a freelance visual artist in Haiti, collaborating with cultural institutions, international organizations, and musicians, while documenting artistic and social life across the country. She was actively engaged in the cultural sphere through initiatives such as Haiti en Scène and Foto Konbit. She co-founded Yanvalou, a cultural space in Port-au-Prince dedicated to artistic exchange.
In 2021, she began developing Ranmase Sonje, a project that marked a turning point in her practice, grounding her work in a deeper exploration of Haitian cultural memory. Through this project, she translates folk and Vodou traditions into layered visual compositions that combine photography, drawing, and archival references.
Since then, she has expanded this approach through collaborations with musicians, creating visual identities and imagery for contemporary sonic worlds. This ongoing dialogue between sound and image allows her to extend her process into modern musical expression, bridging ancestral memory with present-day forms.
She is currently based in the Dominican Republic
Artist Statement
My practice begins with an act of gathering—of fragments, lyrics, gestures, and images. Inspired by the Haitian folk song “Twa Fèy” and its refrain “jete, bliye, ranmase, sonje” (throw away, forget, gather, remember), I approach creation as a process of recovery. I am interested in what remains beneath the surface: the histories I was not taught, and the cultural and spiritual knowledge that has been marginalized or made invisible.
Much of my work draws from Haitian Vodou and folk songs—oral traditions that carry collective memory across generations. Through transcription, interpretation, and image-making, I translate these sonic and embodied archives into visual forms.
My visual language blends photography with hand-drawn elements, creating layered compositions that move between the real and the imagined. I build these images intuitively, allowing symbols, figures, and landscapes to emerge through a process of accumulation and transformation.
This work is both personal and collective. It reflects an ongoing inquiry into how we locate ourselves within inherited histories, and how memory—fragmented, evolving, and sometimes obscured—continues to shape who we are.

Vané Russo | Website
Vané Russo was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she grew up amid ongoing political instability and conflict, including an embargo that deeply impacted the nation. Surrounded by art from an early age, she began painting and drawing in her great-grandmother’s studio, Atelier de la Tête de l’Eau, alongside artists such as André Naudé, Tamara Baussan, and Michèle Manuel.
In 1999, she enrolled at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her early work reflects memories of Haiti and the lasting impressions of her upbringing. Through bold color and expressive gesture, she developed a visual language that brings her personal history to the surface. Working often on large-scale canvases, she invites viewers into an immersive and emotional experience.
In her later collage series, Les Vierges, Russo reinterprets religious imagery to construct complex portraits of contemporary women. Rather than expressions of faith, these works explore the tension between sexuality and spirituality. Drawing from both Catholic and Vodou traditions she encountered in her youth, she uses collage to create a new visual language—one that offers a sense of freedom she had not previously achieved through painting.
Since leaving Puerto Rico, Russo has lived in Lebanon, Paris, Hawaii, New York, and Los Angeles, among other places. Despite her global experience, her identity remains deeply rooted in Haiti. Through her work, she seeks to capture the island in its full complexity—its vibrant culture and landscapes, as well as the shadows cast by its history of conflict.
Artist Statement
The portrayal of women as virgins has shifted profoundly over time. In this body of work, I explore that duality—questioning the idea that purity exists within a single, fixed context. My contemporary interpretations often evoke discomfort, confronting viewers with images of women who resist societal expectations and assert their individuality. I challenge traditional representations of saints, loa, and women, reimagining them beyond inherited conventions.
Here, virginity is reinterpreted through a modern lens, bridging historical ideals with the complexities of contemporary life. By merging these worlds, a more nuanced understanding of women’s roles and identities emerges—one that acknowledges both continuity and transformation. At the same time, formal elements remain central to my practice: composition, layered detail, intricate patterns, and the vibrant choreography of color are as vital as the ideas they carry.
I move constantly between two impulses—being a devoted colorist and an engaged social provocateur.

Vizyon Atistik | OPENING NIGHT | What Paper Remembers: Marks, Memory and Labor
2026-04-25 18:00 - 21:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Join us for the opening reception of What Paper Remembers: Marks, Memory and Labor on April 25, 2026, presented by Haiti Cultural Exchange, Vizyon Atistik.
Opening Reception, April 25
6–9pm
Haiti Cultural Exchange
35 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn, NY
On view from April 25 through June 7
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About the Exhibition
Through drawing, printmaking, collage, and mixed media, the exhibition considers paper as a material that carries memory, labor, and cultural continuity. Paper absorbs gesture records pressure and hesitation, time, revision and return, while holding traces of the hand and the persistence of ideas. Centering practices shaped by embodied knowledge and movement across place, the exhibition affirms paper not as a provisional surface, but as one that remembers and endures.
Curated by HCX fellow Yvena Despagne and Executive Director Régine M. Roumain.
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Featured Artists
Sally Yolaine Binard | Ani Brutus | Jennica Drice | Mel Isidor | Nathalie Jean-Baptiste | Rejin Leys | Julie Rouzier Mevs | Vané Russo
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Learn more about the exhibition and artists here »
Join the artists & curators for other activations taking place as part of this exhibition »

Vizyon Atistik | An n Pale | What Paper Remembers: Marks, Memory and Labor
2026-05-02 16:00 - 18:00 | Haiti Cultural Exchange, 35 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
Join us for this in-person conversation with featured artists of What Paper Remembers: Marks, Memory and Labor.
This event is part of the Vizyon Atistik public programming for What Paper Remembers: Marks, Memory and Labor on view until June 7, 2026.
May 2
4–6pm
Haiti Cultural Exchange
35 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn, NY
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About the Exhibition
Through drawing, printmaking, collage, and mixed media, the exhibition considers paper as a material that carries memory, labor, and cultural continuity. Paper absorbs gesture records pressure and hesitation, time, revision and return, while holding traces of the hand and the persistence of ideas. Centering practices shaped by embodied knowledge and movement across place, the exhibition affirms paper not as a provisional surface, but as one that remembers and endures.
Curated by HCX fellow Yvena Despagne and Executive Director Régine M. Roumain.
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Featured Artists
Sally Yolaine Binard | Ani Brutus | Jennica Drice | Mel Isidor | Nathalie Jean-Baptiste | Rejin Leys | Julie Rouzier Mevs | Vané Russo
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Learn more about the exhibition and artists here »
Join the artists & curators for other activations taking place as part of this exhibition »

Mizik Ayiti! at Brooklyn Botanic Garden featuring Pauline Jean
2026-05-03 12:30 - 16:00 | Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 990 Washington Avenue, Brookyln, NY, United States
Haiti Cultural Exchange presents Mizik Ayiti! celebrating the traditional rhythms of the island of Haiti, featuring Pauline Jean.
Sunday, May 3, 2026
Two Sessions: 12:30 & 2:30
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Plant Family Collection
990 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225
Pauline Jean is a Haitian-American vocalist whose artistry gracefully bridges jazz with global traditions and the rich rhythms of the African diaspora. Celebrated for her warm, expressive tone and captivating stage presence, she creates performances that are both intimate and expansive, inviting audiences into a deeply moving musical experience.
Rooted in her Haitian heritage, Pauline’s work reflects themes of identity, memory, and cultural connection, brought to life through nuanced storytelling and dynamic musicality. She has performed on distinguished stages and at festivals across the United States and internationally, earning recognition for performances that are as emotionally resonant as they are artistically refined.
Through her voice, Pauline Jean honors tradition while embracing a contemporary sensibility, offering music that is timeless, soul-stirring, and profoundly human.

Presenting in collaboration with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Free with Garden admission.
Click here to purchase tickets for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden »

Ti Atis Second Saturdays: Haitian Heritage Month Selebrasyon!
2026-05-09 11:30 - 16:00 | Brooklyn Children’s Museum, 145 Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11213
Join us for the season finale of HCX Ti Atis Second Saturday series at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
Ti Atis Haitian Heritage Month Selebrasyon!—a joyful, immersive celebration of Haitian culture! This special day is packed with family-friendly fun, featuring vibrant dance, hands-on arts and crafts workshops, and captivating storytelling rooted in Haitian culture and traditions.
Bring the whole family and experience the richness of Haiti’s heritage through creativity, movement, and community.
Featuring some of our favorite Ti Atis Second Saturday artists, be there for a day-long carousel of fun & Haitian pride!
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Saturday, May 9th, 2026
Three sessions from 11:30am–4pm
Brooklyn Children’s Museum
145 Brooklyn Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11213
11:30am-12:30pm in the Colorlab
Artist Nica Drice will lead a hands-on printmaking session where families will explore Haitian culture through cyanotype, a sun-printing (UV) process that creates vivid blue images. Using recycled, repurposed materials and natural objects, participants will design paper or fabric inspired by Haitian culture.
1:00-2:00pm on the BK Voices
Immerse yourself in the vibrant spirit of Haitian and Caribbean culture with author and educator Justine A.P. Louis of VivLiv Books! This dynamic session brings culture to life for Haitian Heritage Month with interactive Haitian game stations & crafts for children and parents.
3:00-4:00pm on the Rooftop Terrace
Join dancer and choreographer Robenson Mathurin who will be teaching using music, rhythm, and creative play. Families will learn the basics of Haitian folkloric dance while discovering the stories and meanings behind each step.
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As a special offer for the HCX community, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum is offering FREE admission for 20 people.
Limit 3 tickets per family. (Tickets will be held at the counter on the day of.)
RSVP below!
Attendance FREE with museum admission.
If free HCX Community RSVP is no longer available on this page, please purchase a ticket to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum here [insert link]
Spaces limited.
Purchase a ticket to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum here »
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About Ti Atis
Ti Atis returns to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a new season of interactive youth and family programming! Ti Atis (Little Artists) engages youth of Haitian descent and their peers with Haitian history and heritage via the arts, giving young people the tools to build an inclusive and culturally informed future as they learn about diverse art forms from professional Haitian artists.
Mark your calendars! Happening on the second Saturday of every month from November 2025 to May 2026.

Salon d’Ayiti: A Living Tribute to René Depestre
2026-05-09 16:00 - 18:00 | The Center For Fiction, 15 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11217
updated as of May 7, 2026
POSTPONED | Salon d’Ayiti
Following the recent loss of beloved writer & community leader Michèle Voltaire Marcelin, HCX and our hosts have made the decision to adjust May 9th’s Salon d’Ayiti program schedule to allow our community to attend memorial gatherings.
We will soon share a new date for Salon d’Ayiti: A Living Tribute to Rene Depestré.
All are welcome to join in celebrating Michèle’s life at the Opening Reception of “Creativity has no Border” on Saturday, May 9, from 3-6 pm at Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba (219 East 2nd Street, New York, NY).
Our hearts are with Michèle’s family, friends, and the many circles where her ripples carried. We believe it’s important to take this time to honor her life and hold space for one another.
Thank you for your understanding and care.
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Haiti Cultural Exchange and The Center for Fiction collaborate to celebrate the work & living legacy of Haitian author René Depestre.

“The real conversation between spirit and flesh most likely takes place in some undefined realm, a place neither here nor there, where the soul pounds into the body—or flees the body—in a way that only some among the living can fully understand.”
—Edwidge Danticat on René Depestre

This afternoon at The Center for Fiction will feature select readings & panel discussion featuring the English translator of his work, Yale University professor Kaiama L. Glover, renowned author Edwidge Danticat, and special guests.
Join HCX after the program in their new space at 35 Lafayette Ave for a special post-salon gathering featuring live music.
Haitian author René Depestre is one of the most important voices of twentieth-century world literature. Depestre was born in Jacmel, Haiti, on August 29, 1926. His vast corpus includes works of poetry, prose fiction, literary criticism, and political essays. A peer of and collaborator with such influential political and literary figures as Aimé Césaire, Jacques-Stephen Alexis, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Amado, and André Breton, Depestre has engaged with the politics and aesthetics of Negritude, Marxism, social realism, and Surrealism, among other major twentieth century phenomena, over the course of a career that has spanned more than half a century.
Having lived and written through significant moments in Haitian, New World, and Pan African history––from the overthrow of Haitian dictator Elie Lescot in 1946, to the first Pan African Congress in Paris 1956, to a struggle with Haiti’s François “Papa Doc” Duvalier in 1957, to collaboration with Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara and a fraught relationship with Fidel Castro in the 1960s and 70s––René Depestre has been uniquely placed to narrate how the entirety of the Americas and Europe are implicated in Haiti’s past and present reality.
Depestre’s distinct style is at its best in such timeless works as Hadriana dans tous mes rêves [Hadriana in All My Dreams], Le Mât de Cocagne [The Festival of the Greasy Pole], and Un arc-en-ciel pour l’Occident chrétien [A Rainbow for the Christian West], among other major publications, many of which have been awarded prestigious literary prizes, including the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle, the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Guillaume Apollinaire, and the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde

FREE. $10-$30 Suggested donation.
RSVP on Eventbrite while availability lasts! »

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About the panel
KAIAMA L. GLOVER
Kaiama L. Glover is a translator and scholar of Black Studies, French and Literary Studies. She is a professor at Yale University in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Glover’s research, writing, and teaching are situated at the intersection of French, francophone, Caribbean, and Haitian literary studies. Her work explores phenomena of border-crossing, marginality, gender, and canon-formation, querying––through rigorous textual study––the shifting categories of ‘center’ and ‘margins’ as they are constituted across the postcolonial Afro-Americas. Her work has been supported by fellowships at the New York Public Library Cullman Center, the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris, the PEN/Heim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation. She has translated several works of fiction and non-fiction from French to English, notably Frankétienne’s Ready to Burst (2014), Marie Chauvet’s Dance on the Volcano (2016), René Depestre’s Hadriana in All My Dreams (2017), and Françoise Vergès’s The Wombs of Women: Capitalism, Racialization, Feminism (2019). Glover is an awardee of the PEN/Heim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation. In addition to her published works, Glover has contributed to the field of digital humanities through projects such as In the Same Boats, which visualizes networks of “Caribbean, Latin American, African, European, and Afro-American intellectuals” in the 20th century. She also serves as a founding co-editor of archipelagos | a journal of Caribbean digital praxis.
EDWIDGE DANTICAT
Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist, The Farming of Bones, The Dew Breaker, Brother, I’m Dying, Create Dangerously, Claire of the Sea Light, The Art of Death, Everything Inside, a Reese’s Book Club selection and National Book Critics Circle Awards winner. She is also the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, Best American Essays 2011, Haiti Noir, and Haiti Noir 2. She has written seven books for children and young adults: Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, Mama’s Nightingale, Untwine, My Mommy Medicine, and a travel narrative, After the Dance. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, a 2018 Ford Foundation “Art of Change” fellow, the winner of the 2018 Neustadt International Prize, the 2019 St. Louis Literary Award, the 2011 Bocas Nonfiction Prize and 2020 Bocas Fiction Prize, the 2020 Vilcek Prize for Literature, a 2020 United States Artists Fellow, a two-time winner of The Story Prize, and the 2023 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Her essay collection, We’re Alone, will be published in September 2024. She teaches at Columbia University.
