Brown University will feature Edouard Duval-Carrié’s art exhibition from October 29 – December 13, 2019. This exhibition is hosted by The Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) and the Brown Arts Initiative (BAI), and is curated by Anthony Bogues, CSSJ Director and Asa Messer Professor of Humanities and Critical Theory Professor of Africana Studies at Brown.
Bogues most recently 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.
About Edouard Duval-Carrié
Edouard Duval-Carrié, a Haitian born painter, sculptor, and educator, migrated from Puerto Principe, Haiti to Puerto Rico during the Francois Duvalier dictatorship. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Layola College in Montréal in 1978. He then continued his studies in Paris France from 1988 to 1989, attending the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. After residing in France for many years, Duval-Carrié moved to Miami, FL, in 1993.
In 2014 Duval-Carrié’s work was presented in a major retrospective, Imagined Landscapes, at the Pérez Art Museum, in Miami. The following year, 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 was given the Michael Richards Award and a commission at The Bass Contemporary Art Museum in Miami.
Currently, 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 Oceaniens, Paris; and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico, among other institutions.
Caribbean History Inspired
This art exhibition was inspired by Edouard’s research of slavery, migration, colonialism and Afro-religious practices in the Caribbean. The installation can be viewed on two Brown University campus locations: the CSSJ Gallery and the Cohen Gallery in the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Performing Arts. The eleven pieces on display comprise various mixed media embedded in resin, engraving on back-lit Plexiglas, mixed media on aluminum, and works on paper.
“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.
Edouard Duval-Carrié’s Featured Work
The Cohen Gallery will be displaying Henri Christophe (ou la derniere danse Taino), Burning Amazon and Migration, black and white drypoint engravings. These works emerged following Duval-Carrié’s artist residency at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Center, University of Johannesburg in South Africa. Soucouyant (2017) depicts Caribbean folk tale figures, and narrates elements of Haitian history in addition to the artist’s growing preoccupation with the environment.
Three works from his kaleidoscopic Memory Windows series (#2, #3 and #9, 2017) draw from from Florida history, plantation life, the Haitian Vodou pantheon and well known illustrations of slavery. Once again the artist uses mixed media embedded in resin and backlit.
The CSSJ Gallery will display 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). This novel is a collection of stories about the Haitian revolution, told from the perspective of an enslaved person.
“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 catalog edited by Anthony Bogues. The catalog 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.
