With found enamel, scraps of banknotes, and worn fabrics, Kathia St. Hilaire paints, prints, collages, and weaves together textured tapestries with images to explore her Afro-Caribbean heritage and Haitian history. Through February 9, Louisville’s Speed Art Museum will showcase fifteen of the artist’s mixed-media pieces. Lead curator Tyler Blackwell was first drawn to the fresco-like quality of the artist’s work. He also recognized a connection among her layered designs, his state’s abounding quilt-making legacy, and the patchwork of textiles in the museum’s own collection. “This Kentucky history is one of the reasons why I wanted to bring her art to Louisville,” Blackwell says. “St. Hilaire’s works, like quilts, carry history, stories, and aesthetic experimentation.” For example, in David, named for the 1979 hurricane that struck Haiti, the artist collected shreds of rubber tires, banana leaves, and found papers and twisted them into a bright spiral that shifts in the light.
Southern Agenda