EDOUARD DUVAL-CARRIÉ

Edouard Duval-Carrié was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1954 and educated at the University of Loyola Montreal, Quebec, Canada and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris, France. Duval-Carrié moved to Miami in 1992 and soon became integral to the city’s cultural fabric. Throughout Duval-Carrié’s career, the artist mounted many solo exhibitions, including a major presentation at Perez Art Miami Museum (PAMM) in 2014. Duval-Carrié’s work is represented in a number of important museum and institutional collections such as The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan (USA); Musee des Art Africains et Oceaniens, Paris, France; Davenport Museum of Art, Davenport, Iowa (USA); Perez Art Museum Miami, Florida (USA); Musee de Pantheon National Haitien, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Monterrey, Mexico. In 2014, Duval-Carrié was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the Consul General of France; the artist was also the inaugural recipient of the Ellies Michael Richards Award (2018). 

As an alternative form of historical chronicling, Duval-Carrié’s work critically explores social and historical aspects of Haitian politics and culture. The artist’s rich symbolic language draws on magical realism (or the ‘marvellous real’) and often includes Vodou gods (or Loas) and their related iconographies, combined with aspects of classical mythology, historical narratives connected to the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath, as well as related mythologies surrounding Haitian national heroes such as Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Duval-Carrié was VIAD’s 2019 artist-in-residence. As part of this residency, in collaboration with local printmaking organisation Artist Proof Studios, Duval-Carrié completed a new series of linocut prints and an editioned portfolio entitled The Kingdom of this World, based on the iconic novel by the Cuban author Alejo Carpentier. During the residency, Duval-Carrié engaged with undergraduate Fine Art students at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), Johannesburg, South Africa, and with postgraduate students at Artist Proof Studios, working together on luminous resin displays — or what the artist terms memory windows — that depict each student’s interpretation of their personal and family history.

Edouard Duval-Carrié joined VIAD in 2019.