Spirit is the pulse that moves through all of us—unseen yet omnipresent, eternal yet ever-evolving. In Haiti, espri is not merely a presence but a force—fueling our ability to rise, rebuild, and create anew.
In Espri, artists embrace the mysterious, the divine, and the ancestral as pathways to reimagining Haiti’s future. They craft speculative worlds that assert Haitian identity as vast, fluid, and prosperous. They dissolve the boundaries between the material and mystical, channeling the symbioses of religious beliefs that have shaped Haiti’s consciousness.
Mithsucca Berry’s Forbidden Fruit reminds us that freedom begins within, echoing various works within this room that honor the vastness of one’s identity, beyond the constraints of fear, shame, and expectation. Spirit moves through us with a reverberance, demanding that we see, name, and reject all that seeks to contain us. But spirit is also the quiet endurance that lives within our struggle. In Black Maiden (The Caged Bird Sings a Soliloquy of Midnight Veil), Morel Doucet channels the tenacity that whispers through this room—Haitian people’s ability to rise, time and time again, against systemic oppression and neglect. Espri reminds us that spirit, in all of its forms, propels us forward—fortifying our pursuit of a better world.