The following essay was commissioned by Carlos & Olga Saladrigas Gallery at the Ignatian Center for the Arts, Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, for catalogue documenting the exhibit “The Alchemy of History: Vision of Edouard Duval-Carrié.” For an earlier example of writing about Edouard Duval-Carrié, be sure to see my forthcoming book Miami’s Art Boom: From Local Vision to International Presence, published by University Press of Florida. October 30 launch for book is with Books & Books at Coral Gables Congregational Church, 3010 De Soto Blvd, Coral Gables. At 2 pm November 23 for the Miami Book Fair, a panel discussion on Miami’s Art Boom takes place at the Freedom Tower, Miami Dade College, 200 NE Second Avenue, Miami.
Celebrated writer Alejo Carpentier made a fateful trip to Haiti in the early 1940s. It prompted him to write his classic 1949 novel The Kingdom of this World. That novel reverberates in art by prominent Haitian-born, Miami-based artist Edouard Duval-Carrié. Both have been transfixed by the clashes of culture and history amid the art and soul of Haiti.
Carpentier was entranced by the lore and drumming of Haiti’s Vodou religion, by the “poetic ruins of Sans-Souci,” the early nineteenth century palace ornate with Baroque European grandeur and built for the first King of Haiti. In his preface, Carpentier wrote that the novel reflects an encounter with “the all-too-real enchantment of the land of Haiti,” with what he calls “the marvelous real.” The Kingdom of this World is hailed as the first example of magical realism, a landmark in Latin American literature.
For Carpentier, these sights and sounds embodied the bloody, bold story of the Haitian revolt against slavery from the mid-1700s to 1804. His novel portrays how Haiti became the world’s first free Black republic and first independent state in the Caribbean.
Speaking in his Little Haiti studio, Duval-Carrié bemoaned the poverty, political corruption and deadly violence now wrenching his native country. Haiti has a very rich history, he emphasizes. “Haiti can be so much in the avant-garde of thought. Carpentier created a genre of writing that stunned the world,” he said.
For years, the vivid writing of The Kingdom of this World has left its mark on the artist’s own vivid imagery. Like Carpentier, Duval-Carrié offers a panoply of historical portraits and fantastical imagery, woven with allusions to Vodou spirits.
Such images bring to life the artist’s abiding inquiry into the intricacies of Haitian past and present, into the churning legacy of the Haitian Revolution. “The Alchemy of History: Vision of Edouard Duval-Carrié” presented by Carlos & Olga Saladrigas Gallery at the Ignatian Center for the Arts, Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, assembles over 40 works encompassing 13 years of his career, from 2010 to 2023.
Duval-Carrié has brought his artistic sensibility to inventive painting, printmaking, and sculpture. This exhibit’s primary focus, however, is devoted to engravings and etchings. They are encased in artist frames embellished with contrasting Rococo flourishes and neoclassical geometric patterns. Such lavish framing of these figures and symbols integral to Haitian history only seems to suggest an aristocratic aura. The art itself evokes a history bent on the destruction of French colonial power.
His engraving on Plexiglas “Mackandal S’Envoie” (2017) illustrates the artist’s vision of an astonishing event in the novel. Carpentier recounts how the rebel slave Mackandal is said to have metamorphosed into various insects. In the artist’s engraving, Mackandal’s eyes resemble spiraling curls of centipedes. Crowning this hybrid creature are antennae rendered as two curving palm fronds—a symbol in the ancient world for honor and victory. Duval-Carrié shows the rebel slave’s spirit as a bizarre insect soaring high above Haiti to escape being burned at the stake.
Makandal is revered for leading a violent, seminal slave uprising in 1757 in Saint-Domingue, the French colony in the western region of the Caribbean island Hispaniola. While at the time the uprising may have seemed unsuccessful, it’s considered an important precursor to Saint-Domingue’s transformation into the country of Haiti in 1804.
Before 1804, Saint-Domingue generated the most riches among colonies in the French empire. An estimated 40 percent of sugar and 60 percent of coffee imported to Europe were harvested in Saint-Domingue. That wealth exacted a terrible price. Plantation owners of Saint-Domingue were considered among the most cruel and vengeful in the Americas.
“The French never got over the fact that they lost the crown jewel of their dominion,” says Duval-Carrié.
Duval-Carrié is intrigued by how idyllic images of Haiti and the Caribbean were created by those who had never visited the region or maintained a blind eye to Blacks if they did. His own printmaking offers a severe rebuke to that seductive imagery. It was, he has said, “totally propaganda. One has to remember that these were plantation economies with slaves. This was the whole period when there were hundreds of thousands of people from Africa creating all the wealth in Europe because at that time sugar was a major staple. It was what oil is today.”
For his 2014 solo show “Imagined Landscapes,” featuring paintings and sculptural chandeliers at Pérez Art Museum Miami, sixteenth century European engravings by Theodor de Bry were an inspiration. Growing up in Haiti, Duval-Carrié remembers that his early school books were still illustrated with engravings of Indigenous people in the Caribbean by de Bry. “They were lily white and had these fantastic plumes on their heads,” he recalls. “They were more fantasy than anything else.”
At Belen, he upends this mode of flagrantly mis-educational illustration with prints imbued with his own take on the “marvelous real.” Some prints are inspired by prominent figures in Haitian history, like the “President Series” (2020) and “Important Women Series” (2020). In palest blue, these finely detailed, mirror-bright engravings on Plexiglas confuse the eye. As you look at them directly, your own face becomes reflected on the Plexiglas print. As a result, your face metamorphoses into a self-portrait merging with a portrait of a woman or man who was influential in Haiti’s fight for independence.
Duval-Carrié underscores the profound relevance of Haitian and Caribbean history by creating prints in shades of cobalt blue Plexiglas that act as mirrors. Moreover, he underscores that Haitian and Caribbean history belong to the larger history of the Americas and to world history.
Intense shades of cobalt blue recall the Caribbean. Such gorgeous blues remind us that picturesque Caribbean waters once witnessed the horrific Middle Passage. During the years 1526 to 1827, over 12 million Africans were transported to the Americas on cramped vessels. Over 10 million survived to confront hard labor and untimely death on plantations, many in the cane fields of Haiti.
Duval-Carrié is pleased to present his art at Belen Jesuit. Belen students, many likely future leaders in Miami, could benefit from a broader understanding Haiti’s cultural history, he believes, given Miami’s large population with deep ties to Haiti. “That’s why I am doing this. There is so much to unpack,” he says. He looks forward to talking with teachers and students about how his art addresses the legacy of colonialism. Students need to recognize “how important and destructive political power can be.”
