HKW’s reopening festival begins by invoking Papa Legba, the gate opener, guardian of crossroads, and intermediary between a spiritual dimension and the telluric worlds, convened by the Sèvitè Houngan [Vodou priest], Jean-Daniel Lafontant. Lafontant is the co-founder and guardian of the sacred temple Na-Ri-VéH 777 located in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. For more than two decades Lafontant has produced and helped shape a plentitude of documentary films, art exhibitions, articles, conferences, projects, and events on Haitian art and culture, striving to understand Vodou in its spiritual, philosophical, and cultural manifestations.

Vodou is a worldview fusing diverse African traditions, including West African Vodun religion, that is still carried out today by the descendants of the Dahomean, Kongo, and Yoruba people. The culture, traditions, and spiritual practices of the Indigenous Taíno, enslaved in their territory, are also an integral part of Vodou. Later, in colonial Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was called then, the Vodou-vi even took elements from Christianity and other colonial institutions and used them in their practices. To date, some Catholic imagery is a proxy for the ancestral Lwa or Vodou spirits. Vodou is a philosophy, science, and medicine, as well as a healing, religious, and judicial-political system that encompass strong spiritual beliefs rooted in nature and ancestry.

Commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), co-produced by Houngan Jean-Daniel Lafontant, Claude Saturne, and HKW, 2023.