Marla Louissaint—FLATBUSH

Marla’s LAKAY LEKÒL LEGLIZ PLEZI is a participatory community-rooted project inspired by the Haitian pillars of lakou: Lakay (home), Lekòl (school), Legliz (church), and Plezi (pleasure), exploring ritual-making as a personal and collective practice of liberation through movement, organizing, spirituality, and intergenerational storytelling. Through community gatherings, documentary interviews, spiritual rituals, and a culminating exhibition with Haitian neighbors in Flatbush, the project becomes “theater on the stage of revolution,” carrying forward the revolutionary legacy of our ancestors who freed themselves and the world.

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Marla Louissaint (goddexx/they), aka Marla Lou, is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, luminary griot, creative producer, and community-made worldbuilder making the revolution irresistible. An international muse and model, their work has been featured in Vogue Italia, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Savage X Fenty. Their performance credits include Broadway’s Hadestown, the First National Tour of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Netflix’s Seven Seconds, and Showtime’s Flatbush Misdemeanors.

Born in Ayiti and raised in New York City, Marla is an artist and cultural organizer weaving ancestral wisdom, embodied transformation, and radical imagination to disrupt colonial cycles and conjure the worlds we deserve. They are the founder of Lakay Productions, a Haitian Indigenous-led creative agency empowering radical storytellers advancing the global Land Back movement, and Claim Our Space NOW, an abolitionist organization grounded in ritualizing community care, revolutionary study, and radical change to free the people and the land.

Guided by their Haitian ancestors and rebellious inner teenager, Marla’s practice is an ongoing ritual of remembrance, reclamation, and collective liberation. As a potomitan, The People’s Muse, and irresistible agent of decolonization, their rallying cry remains: “Free Your Self. Free the World.”

Marla is in deep gratitude to Haiti Cultural Exchange for this residency and the opportunity to deepen their practice of revolution right from home: Flatbush. A homecoming staying, a reclamation, and an active reminder that revolution begins where we are. Ayibobo. Learn more at Marlalou.com