FAU’s University Galleries to Present ‘Decolonizing Refinement: Contemporary Pursuits in the Art of Edouard Duval-Carrié’

The University Galleries at Florida Atlantic University’s Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters will present “Decolonizing Refinement: Contemporary Pursuits in the Art of Edouard Duval-Carrié.” The exhibition will be on view from Saturday, Nov. 9 through Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019 in the Schmidt Center Gallery, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton campus. There will be an opening reception on Friday, Nov. 8 at 6:30 p.m. featuring a lecture by Edouard Duval Carrié. The lecture and exhibition are free and open to the public.

Duval-Carrié is an internationally significant Miami-based Haitian-born artist who creates colorful, socially and politically-oriented narrative art that channels his knowledge and fascination with Haitian history, spiritual beliefs and folklore. For “Decolonizing Refinement,”.doriginally presented at The Fine Art Museum at Florida State University, Carrié’s art is combined with historical artifacts related to Florida’s agricultural labor history. Artifacts are borrowed from south Florida regional historical collections to expand understanding of Caribbean visual culture and the arts of the African Diaspora by implicating the colonial heritage of Florida and the broader Southeastern United States in circum-Caribbean histories.

Duval-Carrié’s work navigates the historically rich and culturally complex traditions that comprise a uniquely Caribbean perspective. Duval-Carrié fled his homeland as a teenager, during the dictatorship of Francois Duvalier. He studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris and the University of Loyola Montreal in Quebec. Once completing his education, he established his workshop in Miami. Duval-Carrié’s recent works attend to themes of water, travel and Francophone culture. For this artist, water becomes both a symbolic passage and a barrier – the means by which enslaved Africans were brought to the Caribbean and modern-day Haitians migrate to the United States. Both circumstances have been driven by capitalism, a force that occupies Duval-Carrié’s work materially and iconographically.

Khaulah Naima Nuruddin serves as curator for the FAU version of the exhibition. Nuruddin has selected artifacts in collaboration with Duval-Carrié that will be borrowed fromBroward County’s African American Research Library and Cultural Center; the Florida Department of State, Bureau of Archaeological Research; the Delray Beach Historical Society; the S.D. Spady Cultural Heritage Museum, Delray Beach; and the Archaeology collection in FAU’s Department of Anthropology. Nuruddin also has organized a concurrent sister exhibition of Duval-Carrie’s work and historical artifacts to be presented at the S.D. Spady Cultural Heritage Museum in Delray Beach.

In January 2019, FAU’s new “Study of the America’s Initiative” will complement the exhibition with a series of multi-disciplinary public programs that employ the “Decolonizing Refinement exhibition as a point of departure to explore a variety of related social, political and humanities themes. On Monday, Jan. 14, 2019 at 4 p.m., an FAU faculty panel will present “Women’s Writings, The Economy and Social Justice in the Caribbean.” On Saturday, Jan. 19, 2019, an all-day symposium, “Visualizing Decolonization,” will be presented in collaboration with the Boca Raton Museum of Art’s “Imagining Florida: History and Myth in the Sunshine State” (Nov. 13 – March 24, 2019). On Jan. 26 an all-day symposium at FAU will feature the Florida State University scholars who organized the FSU Museum of Fine Arts “Decolonizing Refinement” exhibition and catalogue in conversation with scholars from FAU and other Florida institutions."

The University Galleries have an active Museum Education Program offering interactive exhibition tours for schools and other groups by appointment. The program is a School District of Palm Beach County approved field experience provider. For more information contact Khaulah Naima Nuruddin, Museum Education Coordinator at knuruddin2015@fau.edu.

The University Galleries are open Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. The Schmidt Center Gallery is located in the Performing Arts building (building 51), near the Living Room Theaters. Daytime visitors can obtain a temporary one-day parking pass online for $5 at http://parking.fau.edu, or in person at the Information Booth at FAU’s main entrance. Visitors can also use the parking meters, which cost $2 per hour. Meters can be paid by downloading the Parkmobile app, or with credit card, debit card or exact paper currency (no change is given). Parking for the opening event is free in designated parking lots.