Overview
Didier William (b.1983, Port-au-Prince, Haiti) is a US-based mixed-media painter. His work focuses on constructions of blackness that include the nuances of diasporic identity, and his own experiences of immigrating to the United States from Haiti. William’s paintings undermine traditional aesthetic, racial, and gendered dichotomies in order to reimagine the personal and collective histories, where they may intersect with personal narratives, and what those intersections might yield.
While his paintings contain elements of abstraction and figuration, they incorporate traditions from oil painting, acrylic, collage, wood carving, and printmaking to comment on intersections of identity and culture. William’s interdisciplinary approach to painting evidences the many layers of meaning in each of his works that often bear titles of proverbs and testimonies in his native language of Haitian Kreyol. Androgynous human figures with carved eyes confront his audience and insist on materializing the circuitry of the gaze. In addition, the relationship of spaces is central to William’s thinking. In his paintings he continuously develops formal figurative elements that morph into topographic terrains that reveal secondary and tertiary domains.
William’s work affirms a space of multiplicity that dismantles the normative power of the gaze to inscribe gender and racialize bodies. In this way he unapologetically reclaims autonomy over a fragmented record of history, engaging his personal connection to the complexity of immigrant narratives to create opportunity for investigation and redemption.
His work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and London, and has been acquired for the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Selected works
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Recovery and Reconnaissance: Haiti to Miami, 2024 -
Fruit Tree: Hanging Cypress, 2024
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Cypress Poto, 2024
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Priye (Pray), 2024
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Cypress (2), 2024
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Difé, 2023
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Limye a Pou Yo—Ouve Pot la Pou Yo, 2023
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Fugitive; Mawon, 2023
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Cave 2, 2023
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Small Fires, 2023
Selected exhibitions
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Sculpture Today
Featuring works by Alÿs, Bajević, Caniaris, Los Carpinteros, Deplazes, Doherty, Favre, Hänsli, Ikemura, Leutenegger, Macchi, Shahbazi, Spichtig, William, ZmijewskiZahnradstrasse 21, Zurich 4 Nov - 19 Dec 2025SCULPTURE TODAY Featuring works by Francis Alÿs, Maja Bajević, Vlassis Caniaris, Los Carpinteros, Andriu Deplazes, Willie Doherty, Valérie Favre, Leiko Ikemura, Zilla Leutenegger, Tobias Spichtig, Didier William, and Artur Zmijewski....Read more -
Didier William
UnlimitedArt Basel 2025
Basel, Switzerland
18 - 21 Jun 2025Didier William (*1983, Lives and works in Philadelphia), who immigrated with his family from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Miami at the age of six, explores in his work constructions of Blackness,...Read more -
Didier William
The future is present, the harbinger is homeProspect.6. The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, US
2 Nov 2024 - 2 Feb 2025“Gesture to Home” , an installation by Didier William comprising paintings and larger-than-life epoxy resin sculptures, is currently on view at The Historic New Orleans Collection and runs until February...Read more -
Didier William
Fire FlightGalerie Peter Kilchmann
Zahnradstrasse, Zurich
7 Jun - 26 Jul 2024Didier William Fire Flight June 7 - July 26, 2024 Opening: Saturday, June 8, 6 - 8 PM Zahnradstrasse 21, Zurich The Exhibition is open during Zurich Art Weekend, from...Read more -
Group Show
The Other Side of the Mirror is HomeGalerie Peter Kilchmann
Zahnradstrasse, Zurich
1 Sep - 11 Oct 2023With works by Vlassis Caniaris, Willie Doherty, Beatriz González, Leiko Ikemura, Teresa Margolles, Dagoberto Rodríguez, Adrian Paci, Shirana Shahbazi in collaboration with Anne Morgenstern, Didier William and Artur Zmijewski.Read more -
Didier William
Things Like This Don’t Happen HereJames Fuentes, Los Angeles, US
6 May - 6 Jun 2023Presenting fourteen new paintings, Things Like This Don’t Happen Here advances William’s ongoing investigation of language, aesthetics, tradition, trauma, and autobiography in a manner that is deeply imaginative, mythological, and...Read more -
Didier William
Nou Kite Tout Sa DèyèMuseum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, US
2 Nov 2022 - 16 Apr 2023Curated by Erica Moiah James, Ph.D , the exhibition will feature over forty works spanning multiple mediums, and including some of his newest paintings. Complementing the painted work, and speaking...Read more
News
Press
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Didier William
Forbes, Prospect.6 Upholds New Orleans As Harbinger For The World -
Didier William
6 Standout Artists at Prospect New Orleans Triennial 2024 -
Didier William
Didier William Paints a Diasporic Dreamscape of the Bayou -
Didier William
Financial Times, London, March 6, 2023 -
Didier William
Artforum, January 1, 2023
Publications
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Didier William
Fire Flight, 2024 2024 Read more -
Didier William
JFP01: Didier William, 2023 Edited by Josephine Graf, with contributions by Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Colleen Asper, Jessica Bell Brown, Erica Moiah James, Roman Kalinovski, Dinaw Mengestu, Nell Irvin Painter, Jerry Philogene, and Zoé SamudziJames Fuentes Press
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Didier William
Nou Kite Tout Sa Dèyè, 2022 Edited by Adeze Wilford, Didier WilliamForeword by Chana Budgazad Sheldon
Contribution by Sampada Aranke, Erica Moiah James
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami
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