GRADUATE LECTURE SERIES
Edouard Duval-Carrié: Curating the Global Caribbean
Thursday, November 11
12pm –1:30pm (PST)
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"I was most impressed with the focus and breadth of the Dust Specks on the Sea exhibit, which has the novelty of concentrating on the sculptural production of the Caribbean islands. The region has been historically fractured since the discovery of the new world. The islands of the region were colonized by various European powers. As an artist from the region, Haiti to be specific, I always felt that such small territories were so physically distanced, but there is one unifying aspect to all of them. The prevalence of the plantation as an economic engine and all that goes with it, especially the fact that the indigenous population succumbed to the violent occupation by Europeans and their subsequent replacement by the African enslaved population. This is the common denominator throughout history and for this widespread Archipelago. Though culturally vastly different, exhibitions like this one may or may not find a common thread at the regional level." —Edouard Duval-Carrié
Edouard Duval-Carrié is a contemporary artist and curator based in Miami, Florida. Born and raised in Haiti, Duval-Carrié fled the regime of “Papa Doc” Duvalier as a teenager and subsequently resided in locales as diverse as Puerto Rico, New York, Montreal, Paris, and Miami. Parallels thus emerge between the artist’s cosmopolitan lifestyle and his artistic sensitivity toward the multifaceted identities that form his native Haiti. At heart, Duval-Carrié is an educator: he challenges the viewer to make meaning of dense iconography derived from Caribbean history, politics, and religion. His mixed media works and installations present migrations and transformations, often human and spiritual. Recently the conceptual layering of Duval-Carrié’s works has been further emphasized in his materials and through consistent attention to translucent and reflective mediums, such as glitter, glass, and resin. The introspective effects of these mediums transform his works into spatial interventions that implicate the viewer in their historicity. At their most fundamental, Duval-Carrié’s works ask the viewer to complicate the Western Canon, to consider how Africa has shaped the Americas, and how the Caribbean has shaped the modern world.
His works have been exhibited in major museums, art institutions, and galleries in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Duval-Carrié creates works that speak to the complexities of the Caribbean and its diaspora. Recent solo exhibitions include; Decolonizing Refinement at FSU, FAU, and at the Fondation Clément. The Art of Haiti at the Fine Arts Center in Colorado. Mémoires Encastrées/Memory Windows at The Miami International Airport. The Saga of the Baobab at the Musée des Civilization Noir in Senegal and The Marvelous Real at VIAD, the University of Johannesburg. Duval-Carrié recent group shows include; Bordering The imaginary, Art from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Their Diaspora, En Voyage: Hybridity and Vodou in Haitian Art, Relational UnderCurrents, and the Kingdom of This World.
View Duval-Carrié's artwork in the exhibition Dust Specks on the Sea: Contemporary Sculpture from the French Caribbean & Haiti, on view in the Walter and McBean Galleries November 18, 2021 - February 19, 2022.
