Overview
Centre College’s incoming Grissom Artist-in-Residence is an internationally renowned visual artist.
Haitian-American Edouard Duval-Carrié will be the next Grissom Artist-in-Residence for the 2021-22 academic year. He is the second in this role after the Harlem Quartet’s inaugural residency in 2020-21. The program brings talented artists to the Centre community for education, student engagement and artistic collaboration.
Duval-Carrié will be on campus for three weeks in both the fall and spring semesters, and he will also teach a course during CentreTerm with Assistant Professor of Art History Peter Haffner.
“From the moment the Grissom Artist-in-Residence program was launched, the faculty of Centre’s art program had been thinking about potential candidates whose work might fit the goals of the residency, and Edouard Duval-Carrié was one of the first people who came to mind,” Haffner said. “I first met Edouard back in 2006 when I was an art history major at Bard College writing my senior thesis on Haitian artists. Back then, Edouard graciously welcomed me into his studio in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood for a research interview. Since then, his career and mine have intersected at various points, so I’ve seen up close how successfully he pulls off collaborative, community-based projects.”
There will be many opportunities for the Centre community to collaborate with Duval-Carrié. The artist will be engaged on campus and in the community through convocations in fall and spring, visiting classes as a guest speaker, and working with students and faculty to conceive of and create a work of art that will remain part of Centre’s collection after his residency ends.
“Bringing world-renowned artists to campus to work with our students and faculty is part of our vibrant commitment to academic excellence,” said President Milton Moreland. “Working with and learning directly from Edouard Duval-Carrié will provide our students with an outstanding level of personalized engagement that is our hallmark at Centre.”
Duval-Carrié engages in themes of transnational migration, the legacies of colonialism and the historical movements of people in the Atlantic world. Based in Miami, Duval-Carrié was born in Haiti and raised in Puerto Rico. He often connects the significance of his birth country’s revolutionary history to seemingly far-flung contexts across the trans-Atlantic world.
“Centre students and faculty have a fantastic opportunity to work with a prolific and internationally exhibited visual artist whose work brings a global awareness to local contexts,” Haffner said. “I’ve always been amazed at his ability to shine a light on buried or little-noticed dimensions of local histories. While Danville and Central Kentucky may seem far removed from Haiti, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and European imperial conflicts, it’s easy to forget that Kentucky has been a crossroads between many cultures and people from far-flung locales. There’s potential to uncover all sorts of fascinating connections here.”
Haffner conveyed that Duval-Carrié is eager to start working with the Centre community.
“Art and art history students will have a chance to work with a dynamic, internationally renowned artist who, in addition to creating his own work, has curated exhibitions and has been closely involved in a range of community arts projects,” he said. “But, he looks forward to working with Centre students and faculty across the entire campus. Edouard‘s work is highly interdisciplinary, including a strong historical component. As a student of history, he is well-aware of the ways in which local/regional histories have global significance, sometimes in not-so-obvious ways, so I anticipate he will bring that same focus to bear to his time at Centre.”
This residency program is made possible through a generous donation from Marlene and David Grissom. Mr. Grissom served a long tenure as chair of the Centre College Board of Trustees and continues as a life trustee of the College.
by Matt Overing
June 9, 2021
