MADJEEN ISAAC

My works are about home, community, and belonging. I reimagine and hybridize landscapes that center boundless Caribbean existences—taking up space, forging new realities, and experiencing the buoyancy of daily life post-migration. Pulling from elements of my hometown, Brooklyn, and my ancestral homeland, Haiti, I ultimately question: How does the diaspora continue to place their trust in reimagining new realities of being? How does one reinvent home away from home?

I am inspired by the concept of the lakou, which in Haitian Kreyòl translates to "communal yard" or "small village." Lakous are usually developed and maintained through multiple generations who live, engage, and work cooperatively. They are catalysts for resistance and have sparked many revolutions that still inform the diaspora’s relationship to their bodies, communities, and the land. They hold space for rage, liberation, celebration, ancestral connection, and most importantly, agricultural autonomy. I utilize this framework to examine how the diaspora leans on ancestral knowledge and ways of being while forging new pathways of cultural identity within the landscape. In thinking about Edwidge Danticat’s The Haiti That Dreams, I feel compelled to create worlds that embody the spirit of resistance and hope despite a history of turmoil.

My process emerged as an investigation of liminality, unpacking feelings of being in one place while simultaneously thinking about or longing for another. As I build worlds, my hope is to depict nostalgic portals and blueprints of sovereign futures.