America Has A Problem, Sou Jenou
LAMAR ROBILLIARD, America Has A Problem, Sou Jenou, 2023, Wood, Of Human Bondage book, photographs, chess piece, leather, rice print
America Has a Problem, Sou Je Sou is a work that ruminates on the realities of American capitalism. It implies that being tethered to America and its systems creates a feeling of corporal punishment. As someone who is both Haitian and American, I often find myself intertwining the experiences of both identities in order to make sense of them.
The work is filled with motifs that frequently show up in my practice—photographs, rice, books, and knight pieces from chess. The knights create a symbolic battle between systems birthed from white supremacy and the resistance against them. The Black knight is often the victor, representing Blackness and the enduring force of resistance.
Rice sits at the base of the structure, introducing a Haitian punishment, a Jenou, where one is made to kneel on rice. This element speaks directly to how I experience life in America—an ongoing discipline and demand to endure. The work also incorporates symbols tied to my lived experience, including an email exchange where I asked for help and was rejected by the head of my graduate program—punished for challenging and refusing to conform.
Church Over Spirit (God the Mother, God the Daughter, God the Holy Spirit)
LAMAR ROBILLIARD, Church Over Spirit (God the Mother, God the Daughter, God the Holy Spirit), 2024, Wood, cowrie shells, Haitian rum, ceramic sculpture, incense sticks, 50 × 5.5 × 12 in
Church Over Spirit is the second iteration in my Black Madonna series. I’m playing with the idea of a reimagined Holy Trinity—questioning why there has never been a feminine depiction of God × 3, and wondering what that might look like.
The Barbancourt bottles connect the work to my Haitian ancestry—they’ve long been used in spiritual ceremonies. One bottle is uncapped and empty, symbolizing the spirits in transition or the afterlife. The other represents the spirit of the living. I placed the missing bottle cap on the back of the sculpture to hint at the playfulness of spirit—how it always lingers behind us, dwelling just out of view.
Is it church over spirit—or spirit over church? I leave that for you to reflect on.
As a conceptual artist with a didactic intent, my practice takes a multidisciplinary approach, using information as a medium. This information is drawn from research, which ultimately informs my choice of materials. The work expands upon a range of ideas—Sun Ra, Black material culture, literature, spirituality, resistance, assemblage, Haiti, the unfavored American experience, and an obsession with flying and freedom. I often substitute the word fly for free in an effort to soften the weight of freedom, redirecting the imagination toward flydom.
Through curiosity and skepticism, I cross-examine the political and socio-economic dimensions of the information I engage with, and how they shape our behavior and psyche.
My goal is to challenge the viewer’s understanding of a subject—in hopes of lifting whatever veil they’ve been conditioned to believe. Acknowledging that we each hold singular perspectives, I aim to point toward the ones we may miss, while remaining open to the perspectives that emerge through the exchange between artwork and audience.
The work featured in Nou Ayiti explores the deep relationship between Haitian ancestry and American life, and how my own upbringing informs my practice. I hope it inspires other Haitian and Haitian-American artists who may not yet be deeply connected to their roots to discover the throughline between home and the new homes they’ve migrated to.
Lamar Robillard (b. 1991, New York, New York; lives in Brooklyn, New York) is a conceptual artist, photographer, and educator working primarily with visual familiarity and found objects. His practice is an act of resistance that takes a multidisciplinary approach to examining visibility, nonconformity, and spirituality as they relate to identity, Black material culture, and the self-coined “Unfavored American” experience.
Robillard’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at ArtPort Kingston, Bed-Stuy Art House, HAUSEN, Art Helix Gallery, Swivel Gallery, EFA Project Space, the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, Collision Gallery, and ChaShaMa Galleries.
Recent projects and features include his exhibition Sunday’s Best at Long Gallery Harlem (2025), a poetic and visually resonant presentation centered on Afro‑diasporic identity and aesthetic tradition; his debut solo show Afrospirituality: Something Like a Phenomena at HAUSEN Gallery, which was covered in W Magazine for its engagement with healing, spirituality, and material culture; and his selection as a participating artist in SaveArtSpace’s 10th Anniversary The People’s Art exhibition, featuring public art installations across New York City. In 2021 Robillard took part in the Jank Museum residency at EFA Project Space, supported by the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, which included public programming and artist discussion.