Dreams, in a Freudian sense, have the function of dispelling fears, anxieties, and frustrations, and also they are an opportunity for the unconscious and repressed impulses to free themselves and express themselves.
In Haitian Vodou, dreams can sometimes have interpretations that are similar to Freudian interpretations but they are mainly messages of the protective spirits.
In this movie, I play on these different aspects of what could be my fears-dreams, frustrations-dreams, anxiety-dreams, fantasy-dreams, and spirit-dreams.
This film is an edit of sequences oscillating between dream fantasies and anguished dreams. It plays on the real-unreal duality, video images shot in real situations or scripted images, and softness-violence. The gentleness of a couple of men dancing inside a dilapidated space, like the gentleness or humanity that we meet in destroyed places in Haiti.
The permanent anguish when we currently live in Haiti to find ourselves in front of bandits, kidnapped, or simply getting in their way is also illustrated by images of violence and shootings. The population of deprived neighborhoods itself, suffering from starvation, manifesting for a vital minimum of the state, and repressed by the forces of law and order, is a constant preoccupation of my work.
Are earthquakes a manageable natural disaster, or will they cause people to die because of a lack of state structure? Notes played on the keyboard by my mother require a little healing for this suffering
Maksaens Denis, My dreams, 2021
Full HD video 1920 x 1080, colour, sound, 22'00"
Maksaens Denis is a visual artist born and raised in Haiti, and who lives between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He is an established international artist who has exhibited worldwide in Europe, America, Africa, and Asia: Venice Bienal in 2005, Infinite Island, Brooklyn, New York in 2007, Dakar Bienal in 2010 Havana Bienal in 2011, Haiti, two centuries of artistic creation in Grand Palais, Paris in 2015, Digital arts festival at the Halles of Schaerbeek in Bruxelles, Mammon at the Museum of Fine arts in Split, Croatia in 2018, Relational Undercurrents, California, New-York, Miami, 2018, Forecast Forms, at the MCA Chicago, 2023, Nexus at Moca Taipei, 2023, Utopias Caribes at Quinta de Bolivar, Bogota, 2025.
Denis is the recipient of multiple international grants, fellowships, and awards. First prize (Prix Grand Ovni) at the Festival Objectif Video Nice (OvNi), 2021, for his video Installation “My dreams”. Residency Prize of Instituto Sacatar at Videobrasil 2023. Denis is renowned as the pioneer in multi-media and digital art using mapping techniques in the Caribbean. He loves to play with the duality and the contrast of the images between the abstract, very colorful aesthetic and the realism of the color or black and white photo or video, and combines effortlessly a visual aesthetic inspired by electronic music, combined with the Vodou culture.
He collaborates with artists from diverse disciplines, including visual artists, photographers, poets, dancers, and performers, in residencies held in various countries worldwide.
His video art El mando, is in the Wilfredo Lam Museum collection, and his installation Kwa Bawon, is part of the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago.