This year, MoMA’s Cisneros Institute embarked on a new research project: Bridging the Sacred: Spiritual Streams in Twentieth Century Latin American and Caribbean Art, 1920–1970. Artists and specialists from Latin America and the Caribbean will convene in a series of conversations, gatherings, and publications around modern art and spirituality, with a particular focus on Afro-diasporic, Indigenous, occult, Jewish, and Catholic traditions.
As part of a series of interviews related to this project, we spoke with Haitian American artist Didier William. We invited Didier to reflect on his recent work and exhibitions, as well as on MoMA’s collection of modern Haitian art. In this conversation, the artist takes us through the challenges of collecting and exhibiting Caribbean art and artists, including work grounded in the Vodou religion. His view reaffirms and reclaims art practices and spiritual beliefs that had been hidden in order to survive, and that are now finding public appreciation in the Caribbean and beyond.
