C215. Port Au Prince, Haiti. April 2024. (photo © C215)

Last week The Huffington Post covered this feature from Jaime Rojo and Steven Harrington of Brooklyn Street Art, highlighting Parisian street artist C215‘s trip to Haiti. C215 last exhibited in the Shooting Gallery in 2024 with the solo show Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.  In this interview with BSA, C215 explains what it’s like to paint in the streets of Haiti, and how he accommodated his work to respect the people’s native customs. As dictated by Voodoo culture, its considered inauspicious to render the likeness of an individual who has died, so C215 made sure all of his subjects were alive and well.

C215 explains his stylistic shift from a black and white palette to a wildly radiant one, where his latest murals are ebullient and colorful. The artist explains that he began working with a fuller chromatic spectrum after suffering a bout of meningitis, where he was shut up in a dark room for over a month to recover.

C215 mentions that painting with a fuller range of color means it takes longer to execute a piece, a drawback for artists painting on the street, since a minimized install time reduces the likelihood of dealing with the police. We think the extra time has paid off with beautiful results.

Read the full interview here and check out more photos after the jump.

C215. Port Au Prince, Haiti. April 2024. (photo © Viktor Gjengaar)

C215. Port Au Prince, Haiti. April 2024. (photo © C215)

C215. Port Au Prince, Haiti. April 2024. (photo © C215)

C215. Port Au Prince, Haiti. April 2024. (photo © C215)

C215. Port Au Prince, Haiti. April 2024. (photo © C215)