M. Florine Démosthène

This exhibition of Haitian American artists M. Florine Démosthène and Didier William—both featured in the Frist Art Museum’s 2023 group show Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage—examines the capacity of immigrant bodies to recall a homeland while also reflecting a new, hybrid existence.

Through a selection of figurative paintings, collages, and sculptures, Démosthène and William offer insights into how they occupy spaces outside Haiti (Démosthène is based primarily in New York and Accra, Ghana; William works in Philadelphia) while still being informed by the country’s cultural and spiritual traditions. Formal connections shared by the artists include an emphasis on eyes as a way to subvert an anti-immigrant gaze and the use of paired figures—a reference Vodou’s divine twins, Marassa Jumeaux—to express the duality of their experiences growing up in both Haiti and the United States.