Tap tap are the most common form of transport in Haiti. Always crowded and exquisitely decorated, these privately owned vehicles transport hundreds of people between the mountains and the coast each day. Tap tap are retrofitted jeeps, minivans, and small buses that get their name from the sounds that passengers make as they tap on the sides of the vehicle to signal the driver that they have reached their destination. 

Tap tap are mobile works of art, visual stories in motion. Vivid examples of a range of Haitian painting traditions, they literally and graphically carry Haitians' hopes, wishes, and prayers over country roads and through city streets. As art historian Donald Consentino notes, "The same artists who paint their visions on tap-tap frames also practice their art on cardboard, burlap and an occasional canvas, creating…the greatest tradition of popular art in the world." 

Tap tap are painted yearly by artists commissioned to express the owners' vision. Some tap-taps sport names reflecting the wish for divine protection, such as "La Puissance Divine" (Divine Power) and "God Is Good; God Is Great." Others may depict the sacred stories and symbols of Vodou, of Catholicism, and even of the Rastafarian religion of Jamaica, which like Haitian Vodou draws upon Christian images and transforms them with local meanings. Still other tap-tap carry images or messages of a strictly personal nature.