Installation Multi-Track Video x 3 channels, 24’20, sound, 2024 With the voices of artists Joëlle Ferly and Nikki Elisée, the captain of the sailboat Badach and his father Shango.

« Résonances », a work by Haitian video artist and sculptor Maksaens Denis, is a poetic and political multimedia installation that delves into contemporary Caribbean identity. Conceived during an artist residency in Guadeloupe hosted by La Maison des Illustres / Maison Lémès, the installation challenges the West’s reductionist, exoticized, and folkloric gaze upon contemporary artists of the Caribbean. Instead, it grants voice to Caribbeans themselves, offering space to articulate their own perceptions of identity, history, memory, and insular space. True to Denis’s overarching creative approach, the piece weaves together video imagery, sonic textures, and spoken conversations into an immersive audio-visual dialogue.

A pioneer of video art in the Caribbean, Denis was born in Haiti and trained in broadcast journalism in Paris. It was through his encounter with the alternative techno rave scene of the 1990s that he developed his hallmark visual experimentation. His oeuvre fuses Vodou spirituality with digital aesthetics, giving rise to immersive installations that blend performance, video, sculpture, and visual-audio collage. Denis addresses the complexities of postcolonial identities and Caribbean memory by exploring island narratives, migration, and the stereotypes forged by Western history, imparting a spiritual—even mystical—dimension to his vision. Equally driven by political and social engagement, his work confronts poverty, violence, the body, and the lived realities of queer communities. Placing collectivity and experimentation at the very core of his practice, Denis achieves a seamless fusion of music and image, inviting the audience to merge entirely with the experience.