Nou Fè Pati, Nou Se, Nou Anvi (We Belong, We be, We Long), 2020 (detail)
Photo: Widline Cadet, Courtesy of the artist
Next Big Things: Widline Cadet
The buzzworthy photographer draws from personal history to examine race, memory, erasure, migration and immigration
Widline Cadet Photo: Widline Cadet, Courtesy of the artist
Haitian-born artist Widline Cadet may work from her laptop in bed at her Harlem apartment, but her attention-grabbing imagery transports viewers to faraway places. Her photography, videos, and installation art explore race and identity, particularly Black female immigrants, and results in what she calls “a semi-imagined world grounded in my experiences.”
Body of work: “I love having the ability to dream up different imagery and being able to construct and bring them to life. Because I do a lot of self-portrait, I get to see myself and my body exist and occupy space in multiple worlds all at once.”
Seremoni Disparisyon #1 (Ritual [Dis] Appearance #1), 2019. Photo: Widline Cadet, Courtesy of the artist
Up next: Currently part of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s artist-in-residence program through September 2021, Cadet is also displaying work in an exhibition at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon, and will be shown at the Royal Photographic Society in in the U.K. in the spring. widlinecadet.com
Bougenvilye, Ki Iitilize Pou Bote, Vi Prive sou Liy Kloti, ak Pwoteksyon Pikan (Bougainvillea, Used for Beauty, Privacy on Fence Lines, and Thorny Protection), 2019 Photo: Widline Cadet, Courtesy of the artist
Kò an Kòm yon Lokal ki Baze sou Je (The Body as a Site Based on Sight), 2019 Photo: Widline Cadet, Courtesy of the artist
“Widline’s practice is an intimate entanglement. Her photographs show us how people move, reshaping a visual vocabulary of diaspora with the traces in her images marking this journey, a writing with the body that whispers, ‘We are still here.’”
Legacy Russell, associate curator, the Studio Museum in Harlem
Nou Fè Pati, Nou Se, Nou Anvi (We Belong, We be, We Long), 2020 Photo: Widline Cadet, Courtesy of the artist
Cover: Nou Fè Pati, Nou Se, Nou Anvi (We Belong, We be, We Long), 2020 (detail)
Photo: Widline Cadet, Courtesy of the artist
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