Providence, RI: The Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) and the Brown Arts Initiative (BAI) at Brown University will showcase the work of internationally acclaimed Haitian American artist Edouard Duval-Carrié this fall. The exhibition of major works created since 2017 is curated by Anthony Bogues, CSSJ Director and Asa Messer Professor of Humanities and Critical Theory Professor of Africana Studies at Brown.
Bogues and the artist are long-time curatorial collaborators. Most recently, Bogues—whose research interests include studies of Caribbean history, culture and art—curated The Art of Haiti: Loas, History and Memory at the Fine Arts Center at Colorado College in 2018, and Edouard Duval-Carrié: Metamorphosis, a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, FL, in 2017.
On view October 29–December 13, 2019, Edouard Duval-Carrié and the Art of Embedded Histories draws inspiration from the artist’s investigation of the complex histories of the Caribbean spanning slavery, migration, colonialism and Afro-religious practices. It will be installed at two Brown campus venues: the CSSJ Gallery and the Cohen Gallery in the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Performing Arts. Exhibition subtitles for the CSSJ Gallery are The Kingdom of this World and, at the Cohen Gallery, Memory and Embedded Histories.
“Duval-Carrié continues his examination of Haitian history in part to reframe the colonial gaze that is still perpetuated about Haiti. This gaze obscures the nation’s extraordinarily rich, complex, artistic, cultural and literary life. With Art of Embedded History, the CSSJ continues to engage with artists around the theme of the relationship of history to memory and the different ways in which the afterlives of colonialism and racial slavery continue to haunt our present,” said Bogues.
Since 2014, the Miami-based Duval-Carrié has been occupied with a series of artistic experiments with material. The eleven works on display comprise mixed media embedded in resin, engraving on back-lit Plexiglas, mixed media on aluminum and works on paper.
The Cohen Gallery will feature three of the artist’s black and white drypoint engravings completed this year: Henri Christophe (ou la derniere danse Taino), Burning Amazon and Migration. These works developed from a recent artist residency at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Center, University of Johannesburg in South Africa, which facilitated Duval-Carrié’s exploration of linocut techniques. Soucouyant (2017), depicting Caribbean folk talk figures, provides a vivid narrative of elements of Haitian history and the artist's growing preoccupation with the environment.
Three works from his kaleidoscopic Memory Windows series (#2, #3 and #9, 2017) showcase the artist’s command as a master colorist. They intentionally include references to his previous work and feature new imagery and iconography drawn from Florida history, plantation life, the Haitian Vodou pantheon and well-known illustrations of slavery. Created with mixed media embedded in resin and backlit, each Memory Window comprises eight boxes surrounding a centerpiece of figures and motifs deployed by the artist throughout his career to reveal interplay and slippage between memory and history.
On view at the CSSJ Gallery, black and white linocut prints Amazon and Migration and the engraving Royaume de ce Monde (2017) will be presented in dialogue with The Kingdom of this World, a series inspired by Alejo Carpentier’s novel “The Kingdom of this World” (published in 1949). The novel recounts stories about the Haitian revolution told from the perspective of Ti Noel, an enslaved person. Ti Noel a San Souci (2018), The Kingdom of this World (2018) and La Fin de Ti Noel (2018) illustrate the significance of slave rebellions and the Haitian revolution—Duval-Carrié has previously painted images of its leader, Toussaint L’ Ouverture—and their various impacts across the Caribbean and the Afro-Caribbean diaspora.
“Decades of research has made it evident that my endeavors have always been to elucidate the trials and tribulations of my native land Haiti via the visual field…My collaboration with the CSSJ has provided me with inspiration and access to a vast array of information that would not have been readily accessible. Again, thinking retrospectively by placing the history of Haiti in a more global context has permitted me to evaluate many of the issues concerning that nation in a new light,” said Duval-Carrié.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue edited by Anthony Bogues. The catalogue is published by the CSSJ at Brown University and is available free of charge at the Cohen Gallery and CSSJ Gallery.
Public Programs
October 24, 2019, 12:00 pm. Edouard Duval-Carrié lunch talk with students
The Center for Public Humanities, 357 Benefit Street
October 29, 2019, 5:30 pm. Edouard Duval-Carrié keynote lecture/exhibition opening
Granoff Center, 154 Angell Street
December 12, 2019, 5:30 pm. Exhibition opening at CSSJ Gallery for students of Haiti: A New World, A Free World
Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice Gallery, 94 Waterman Street
This course is taught by Dr. Bogues and students will work with Duval-Carrié to create this exhibition.
About Edouard Duval-Carrié
Painter, sculptor and educator Edouard Duval-Carrié (b. 1954) was born in Puerto Principe, Haiti, and migrated with his family to Puerto Rico during the Francois Duvalier dictatorship. He studied at the Université de Montréal and McGill University in Canada before graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from Loyola College, Montréal in 1978. He later attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, from 1988 to 1989. He resided in France for many years and moved to Miami, FL, in 1993.
Duval-Carrié’s work was presented in a major retrospective, Imagined Landscapes, at the Pérez Art Museum, in Miami, in 2014. In 2015, he received the "U.S. Artist Award" and participated in the exposition "Haiti" at the Grand Palais Paris, France. In 2016, he was awarded the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. In 2018 he received the Michael Richards Award and a commission at The Bass Contemporary Art Museum in Miami.
Duval-Carrié's artwork is in the permanent collection of Africa Museum, Netherlands; Frost Art Museum; Lowe Art Museum, Miami, FL; Musée des Art Africains et Oceanians, Paris; and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico, among other institutions.
About Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice
The Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) is a scholarly research center at Brown University with a public humanities mission. Recognizing that racial and chattel slavery were central to the historical formation of the Americas and the modern world, the CSSJ creates a space for the interdisciplinary study of the historical forms of slavery while also examining how these legacies shape our contemporary world. The Center’s work is organized around research clusters, public humanities projects, seminar series and public engagement dealing with the implications of deposits of racial slavery today.
https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/slavery-and-justice/
About Brown Arts Initiative
The Brown Arts Initiative (BAI) at Brown University seeks to cultivate creative expression and foster an interdisciplinary environment where faculty and students learn from one another and from artists and scholars in a wide range of fields across the campus and around the world. A consortium of six arts departments and two programs that encompass the performing, literary and visual arts, BAI works collaboratively to enhance curricular and co-curricular offerings, directly engage students with prominent artists working in all genres and media, and supports a diverse program of concerts, performances, exhibitions, screenings, lectures and symposia each year. BAI takes full advantage of the University’s Open Curriculum and builds on Brown’s reputation as a destination for arts exploration, contributing to cultural enterprise through the integration of theory, practice and scholarship with an emphasis on innovation and discovery that results from rigorous artmaking and experimentation.
BAI comprises and integrates History of Art and Architecture; Literary Arts; Modern Culture and Media; Music; Theatre Arts and Performance Studies; Visual Art; the David Winton Bell Gallery; and Rites and Reason Theatre/Africana Studies.