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Megan D Robinson: You have become known for your haute couture sculptural creations. What drew you to work with fashion as a medium?

Fabiola Jean-Louise: Fashion, to me, is a language—one that communicates without words, carrying with it the power to exalt, to conceal, to declare. I was drawn to it not simply as adornment, but as a vessel of historical memory and resistance. Garments, especially those fashioned in the style of 18th-century European court dress, became a way to interrogate narratives of power, beauty, and Black erasure. My work uses the aesthetics of couture to seduce, only to later reveal the complex, often painful, truths woven into the seams of colonial history. The sculptural dresses I create from paper aren't just garments; they are reimagined armor, relics, and testimonies—embodiments of memory and ancestral presence.

MDR: You work with a fascinating array of materials, from paper pulp to gems and minerals. What draws you to work with these materials?

FJL: Each material I work with carries its own spirit and symbolism. Paper, for example, is fragile yet capable of incredible transformation—it’s an apt metaphor for the resilience of oppressed peoples and the hidden histories I seek to uncover. But I don’t stop there. I add gems, gold, glass, and metal to the material of paper to signal something deeper: that I am adding value to something that is often dismissed as worthless, to challenge and expose the very systems that define worth. In doing so, I am also asserting the value of human life—specifically, Black life.

These materials are not chosen for spectacle; they are deliberate and ceremonial. Gems and minerals call back to the Earth, to ancestral wealth and stolen resources. Their presence in my work is a quiet rebellion against erasure—a way to restore dignity, beauty, and sacredness where it was denied. Through this alchemical process, I seek to create objects that carry not just form, but weight: emotional, historical, and spiritual.

MDR: How are history, culture, and spirituality important in your work?

FJL: History is the backbone of my practice, but I engage with it through a decolonial, spirit-led lens. I’m not merely retelling events—I’m re-animating what was buried, silenced, or distorted. As a Haitian woman and time traveler, I’m deeply invested in the cultural and spiritual legacies of African diasporic peoples, especially those shaped by the Haitian Revolution and Vodou cosmology. Spirit is always present in my work—not as metaphor, but as collaborator. My creations are often inhabited by ancestral energies; they serve as vessels for those who came before me and for truths that exist beyond the veil. Culture, then, is not static but something I co-create with my foremothers—through image, object, and ritualized form.

MDR: Can you talk about the evolution of your work in your latest exhibition, Waters of the Abyss: An Intersection of Spirit and Freedom?

FJL: Waters of the Abyss marks a deepening in my sculptural language—a more embodied, spatial, and metaphysical turn in the work. While I didn’t create ceremonial masks for this collection, I intentionally drew inspiration from ancient African artifacts that held ceremonial, spiritual, and cultural significance. These objects weren’t just aesthetic—they were alive, encoded with memory, and often served as conduits between worlds. I wanted to channel that same kind of energy and presence.

The sculptural forms in this exhibition function as reliquaries and portals—sacred vessels that hold the weight of ancestral stories and submerged truths. This evolution feels like a return to the origin and the beyond simultaneously. It is rooted in history, but it moves through spirit. I’m not just building objects—I’m constructing spaces for communion, for remembrance, for the kind of seeing and feeling that goes beyond what’s visible. This work is an invitation to step into the Abyss—not as a place of darkness, but as a threshold where freedom and spirit meet.

MDR: What do you want people to know about your work? What do you hope viewers experience through your work?

FJL: I want people to understand that my work is not simply about aesthetics or even history—it is about liberation. It is a space where beauty and brutality coexist, where spirit speaks, and where the past and future collapse into the now. I hope viewers experience something that resonates in their bones—a recognition, a discomfort, a calling. My work is an invitation to see differently, to feel more deeply, and to remember that the path to freedom has always been forged through imagination, resistance, and the divine.