Meet Edouard Duval-carrié | Artist/Curator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Edouard Duval-carrié and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Edouard, how do you think about risk?
From early on, my family, though very attached to their homeland, Haiti, felt that for our upbringing it would have been better to leave that place due to its insufferable social configuration and its constant political turmoil. They packed up and went abroad to Puerto Rico where they started a new business. Even though I was very young, 9 years old, I felt that they had taken a serious risk for they hardly knew how to speak English or Spanish. But off we went to a new adventure and I think this fact formed me. Their bravery was quite astonishing for they both truly wanted to keep their status, economic and social despite the fact that this could have been a major setback. The one most affected in this affair was my mother whom I sensed was truly displaced. Anyways, their bravery has always informed me and though I studied in New York and Montreal, my father returned to Haiti despite it all and he felt that we should be around him and embark on a patriotic series of economic ventures that were, according to him, a rather patriotic contribution to the development of that nation. All that was well, but he never accounted for our deep wishes to er elsewhere which was evidently my case. Though I was fully engaged in his ventures, I was determined to delve into the arts and definitely I made sure that Haiti’s culture would be the basis on which I built. But to do so I accepted after a few years of work and exhibits in Port au Prince, a scholarship offered to me by the French Government. This scholarship was particular in the sense that I was invited to celebrate or give my thoughts concerning the French Revolution and its repercussions in their back then colony of Saint Domingue, which had become the most productive and economically rewarding of the French colonial enterprise. In the process of creating this visual history, all the concerned libraries and other institutions containing materials concerning this history had been made available to me. This truly opened my eyes and understanding of the processes which brought about the revolution in my homeland. This profoundly shifted my understanding of my country which unfortunately erased 300 years of common history with France and started its own after that revolution. Haiti starts its history with the ousting of the French from the Island and probably the 300 years of slavery and the war itself did tax the common Haitian into erasing those memories to start anew. As you can surmise, to revisit 300 years of common history and make sense of it from my contemporary perspective has been an ongoing research that I truly cannot see the end of.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
After my stay in Puerto Rico, where we lived for most of my adolescence 9-15 years old, my family again decided that probably that they had escaped and spared us the worst of the Duvalier regime. So, we returned to Haiti so that we could become truly Haitian citizens. I guess this was my parents perspective but for me, it was a confrontation to a most particular of places. From the inception of the Republic of Haiti, it was considered a place of tragedy. The French left the island fuming as the greatest army of the period, Napoleon’s, was literally crushed by what they considered African savages battling them literally with sticks and stones. The power of freedom revealed itself and more than a 100,000 French troupes and more than 500,000 African slaves perished in this endeavor.
This story and others such as the French colonial period as well as the formation and evolution of the Republic of Haiti are sources of great inspiration to me in the sense that it is truly an experiment that is unique in the history of humanity. Nowhere before had a slave rebellion been successful enough to create an anathema Republic and a Black Republic as such. Shunned by the rest of the Western societies for they were all actively involved in slavery and its economic benefit to their societies. Haiti threw this system in a tailspin as the basic precept of humanity had been put to test. This is a story that is so iconic and complex that one has to really expose it for people to understand.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
We live in Miami, a most particular city when considering the whole of the USA. The state apart from its agricultural potential did not have mining and other industrial resources that could have been built around. The first endeavors by Americans in this area were to take advantage of the tropical climate and try to create a sort of destination to escape the harsh Northern weather. Hence all of this city is most probably built around that. So, it’s a myth or fantasy where this seminal activity is what everything is built around. Some tried to create literal fantasies like the Coral Gables and Opa Locka where the fantasy was pushed and they recreated the Arabian Nights and the Southern European Riviera’s. But, the proximity to the Caribbean has created a counterpart to those expectations as political turmoil in those islands, archipelago and the South hemisphere has brought to our shore all types escaping the harshness of those places. Of course, they did not come empty handed and brought all of their heritage and culture to this city making it one of the most interesting cities in the U.S.A.
Miami can claim now to have its own cuisine, which is a blend of what these immigrants have brought along. All under the name of “Fusion”, this city is truly a blender where all are contributing to this particular cuisine. Which is though anchored in traditions, they are as novel and modern as can be.
South Beach, is the magistral blending of it all, architecture, art, food, fashion but basically hedonism.
Miami realized recently that culture and art were absent in this configuration and the city elders have embarked in a serious and effective creation of the missing links that would satisfy all visitors i.e an investment in Museums, Galleries, Entertainment Spaces, all were given attention to and now we have in hand a world class city which glitters for it is truly the new city of lights.
Now we have a Little Haiti, Little Havana and are missing Little Rio and Little Kingston and we even have Inka cuisine to boost.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I read the book ” The Kingdom of This World” by Cuban novelist extraordinaire Alejo Carpentier, which was his view of what the Haitian story was all about. A seminal novel which is attributed to be the founding of Surrealism, the very short novel takes the reader from the end of the colonial Saint Domingue to the creation of the Republic of Haiti. It is written in his own style which gives the sentiments of a reverie as well as a nightmare. This book is probably the most interesting historical account of what is Haiti, it has always been on my mind for I read it early on and managed to illustrate it only 3 years ago. I had to reach a point of ease as an artist to take this task on, not ease at an economic level but ease at a technical level which would permit me to take on this task. I had to learn how to engrave and have substantial knowledge to understand the subtleties stemming from the mind of one of the greatest novelist from Cuba. Only someone close could have made sense of this history.

Website: http://duval-carrie.com/

Instagram: edouardduvalcarrie