Haiti’s vibrant artistic community responded to the country’s political and social crisis in 2019 with an outpouring of creative work that used painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and performance to process collective trauma, express rage, and imagine alternatives. Galleries in Pétionville and the broader Port-au-Prince area hosted exhibitions that directly addressed the PetroCaribe scandal, food insecurity, and the aspirations of the protest movement.
Several prominent Haitian painters created new works depicting the protest marches, incorporating the slogan “Kot Kòb PetroCaribe a?” into visual compositions that combined traditional Haitian artistic motifs with contemporary political commentary. These works quickly circulated on social media, reaching Haitian diaspora communities around the world.
Musicians across genres, from kompa to rap kreyòl to traditional roots music, produced songs that engaged with the crisis. Some became anthems of the protest movement, played at demonstrations and shared millions of times online. The creative outpouring demonstrated the continued vitality of Haitian cultural production even under extreme pressure.
Literary figures and poets also found their voices in the crisis. A collection of poems written in Haitian Creole and addressing the political situation was published by a Port-au-Prince press and distributed free of charge in neighborhoods where the protests were most intense.