Fabiola Jean-Louis: Waters of the Abyss

Fabiola Jean-Louis’s captivating exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invites visitors on a journey through the ancient and eternal, earthly and divine, personal and political. On view through May 25, 2025, the exhibition honors the culture and history of the artist’s native Haiti, with many artworks serving as sacred portals to the “waters of the abyss” where, in the Vodou tradition, ancestral spirits reside. Using paper as her principal medium, Jean-Louis transforms the material into remarkable works of art including stone-like sculptures and lavish period garments.

Waters of the Abyss: An Intersection of Spirit and Freedom, on view in all three of the Museum’s rotating exhibition spaces, reflects Jean-Louis’s rediscovery of her Haitian roots and culture, encompassing the sanctity of Vodou and its role in the Haitian Revolution. The exhibition’s journey begins upon arrival, where visitors are greeted by Ayiti-Tomè (“from now onwards this land is our land”), a public art installation on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade for which the artist merges photographs from visits to Haiti with early versions of sculptures on view in the exhibition. In the Fenway Gallery, Jean-Louis explores her personal history as it intersects with that of her homeland. The odyssey reaches its apex in the Hostetter Gallery, transfigured into imagined ruins of a sacred site hosting divine beings and spiritual symbols from Vodou tradition. As visitors walk through the gallery, they are lulled by the soft vibrato of ocean waves, bells, and windchimes of Ginen Zansèt (Ancestors of Ginen), a sound installation compiled by Jean-Louis in collaboration with Architect Carl Damas. 

“The Gardner Museum is pleased to present new works by contemporary artist and alchemist Fabiola Jean-Louis. Visitors will be mesmerized by Fabiola’s metamorphosis of paper, transforming it into stunning two and three-dimensional treasures,” says Peggy Fogelman, Norma Jean Calderwood Director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. “Just as Isabella Stewart Gardner installed sacred objects and altars throughout her Museum, Fabiola invites us to engage with global religious traditions as well as her own personal spiritual journey.”

Waters of the Abyss features upwards of 40 works, most commissioned specifically for the exhibition and all made out of paper. Jean-Louis turns the paper into a pulp, shaping it into sculptural forms on which she incorporates shells, mineral stones, glass, metals, and crystals. Quotes from the artist, translated into Kreyòl (Haitian Creole), are displayed on gallery walls.  

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Gardner Museum published Waters of the Abyss: An Intersection of Spirit and Freedom. This 128-page hardcover catalog includes photographs of many artworks featured in the exhibition, along with writing by Jean-Louis, Edwidge Danticat (Gardner Artist-in-Residence, 1999), Peggy Fogelman, and exhibition curator, Pieranna Cavalchini.

Fabiola Jean-Louis is a multi-disciplinary artist and visual activist working in paper, textile design, sculpture, photography, and film. She was born (1978) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and moved as a child to Brooklyn, NY, where she continues to live and work. Her Afro-Surrealist oeuvre frequently explores spirituality, history, and the expansive complexities of Blackness. She is a Gardner Museum Artist-in-Residence and the first female Haitian artist to have work exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Waters of the Abyss: An Intersection of Spirit and Freedom is supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, the Barr Foundation, Wagner Foundation, and the Barbara Lee Program Fund. 

The Artist-in-Residence program is supported in part by Lizbeth and George Krupp and directed by Pieranna Cavalchini, Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art. Funding is also provided for site-specific installations of new work on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade on Evans Way. 

The Museum receives operating support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Learn more about this exhibition. Exhibition catalog available.

For press inquiries, email Dawn Griffin, dgriffin@isgm.org or press@isgm.org. 

Other inquiries: information@isgm.org