What Happens to A Dream Deferred
Ésery Mondésir
Video Installation
Fr., 1.8.2025
12:00–23:00
Lydie Dooh Bunya Space
Free entry
Sa., 2.8.2025
12:00–22:00
Lydie Dooh Bunya Space
Free entry
Su., 3.8.2025
12:00–21:00
Lydie Dooh Bunya Space
Free entry
On loop during opening hours
In Haitian Creole with English subtitles, 25'

Ésery Mondésir, What Happens to A Dream Deferred (2020), film still. Courtesy of the artist
Working closely with fellow members of the Haitian diaspora, Toronto-based educator, artist, and film-maker Ésery Mondésir, narrates the experiences of his community. He explores how collective and personal memory are formed and recalled through both official and vernacular archives, examining the narratives and purposes such memory serves. Mondésir presents two films of his Radical Empathy Trilogy during the programme.
Presented as an installation, What Happens to A Dream Deferred (2020), juxtaposes personal desires with oppressive global power structures through the experiences of a group of aspiring Haitian rappers stranded at the Mexico/US border. The film is set on New Year’s Eve in Tijuana. Wood and Colonel are busy making Soup Joumou to celebrate Haitian Independence Day with their friends. As their cooking progresses, memories of the perilous journey that brought them to the border two years ago resurface. Having travelled from Haiti to Brazil, and through nine other South and Central-American countries, they find themselves caught between their dream of a musical career in the US and the anti-Haitian sentiment fuelled by the rhetoric of the country’s administration.
The second film Una Sola Sangre (2018) screens on the second day of Bwa Kayiman—Lakouzémi as prologue to the kongossa entitled The Many Paths of Return.