Before Venice, There’s Little Haiti

MIAMI – As South Florida’s Caribbean cultural landscape continues to gain global recognition, moments like this feel less like interviews and more like reunions rooted in shared history, place, and purpose. Against the backdrop of Little Haiti’s growing influence on the international art scene, reconnecting with Édouard Duval-Carrié and Vanessa Selk, Founder of the TOUT-MONDE Art Foundation, offers a timely opportunity to reflect on how Miami’s Caribbean communities are not just participating in global conversations but shaping them.

With the ongoing effort to link local stories to global platforms, this conversation comes at a key moment. It happens just before Venice, yet it stays rooted in South Florida.

It’s here, in the rhythm of the diaspora and the intimacy of the studio, that the story begins, where catching up becomes a deeper dialogue about art, identity, and the power of Caribbean culture to move the world forward.

Before the global cultural spotlight of Haiti turns to the Venice Biennale, it begins in Little Haiti. On Friday, April 24, 2026, internationally acclaimed Haitian-American artist Edouard Duval-Carrié will open his Miami studio for a rare, one-night-only access to the works that have informed his forthcoming installation at one of the world’s most prestigious art stages.

Presented by the TOUT-MONDE Art Foundation, this intimate gathering offers a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of globally significant work, firmly rooted in Miami’s cultural landscape.

At its core, this is a Miami story. More specifically, it is a story about Little Haiti as a vital cultural engine shaping international conversations in contemporary art.

Duval-Carrié, a defining voice in the city’s artistic identity, brings global attention back to the community and to the Caribbean that has long shaped his work and vision.

The evening will feature:

• An exclusive preview of works from his Venice study series, developed as part of the research and creation process of his forthcoming installation
• A salon-style conversation on Haiti’s participation in the Biennale with a Miami scholar and art historian
• A vibrant cultural program celebrating Haitian music, cuisine, and community
• This moment underscores Miami’s role as a hub for Caribbean contemporary art and cultural exchange, where local narratives resonate on a global stage.

The evening offers a rare opportunity to engage directly with Duval-Carrié at a pivotal moment in his career. Guests will have first access to acquire original works from this Venice study series, in dialogue with his installation for the Haitian Pavilion.

The evening begins with a VIP collectors’ cocktail, followed by a featured salon conversation between Duval-Carrié and scholar Erica Moiah James titled:

“Narrating Haiti through the Work of Edouard Duval-Carrie: Art, History, and Transformation on the Eve of the Venice Biennale 2026.”

The discussion will explore the cultural, political, and artistic significance of Haiti’s presence on the global stage, including the conceptual development of the upcoming installation and its dialogue with the late curator Koyo Kouoh.

The evening concludes with a celebratory cultural gathering featuring an electronic music set by DJ Gardy Girault, a curated Haitian buffet, and a rhum bar, creating an immersive environment of Caribbean artistic exchange.

“This evening is not only about celebrating Haiti and supporting Edouard’s participation in the Venice Biennale, it’s about expanding access to contemporary art. By opening the studio and making these works available, we’re engaging a new generation of collectors and inviting them into a global cultural moment,” said Vanessa Selk, Founding Artistic Director of the TOUT-MONDE Art Foundation.

“Inspired by Édouard Glissant’s vision of the Tout-Monde, we are creating a space where artists, collectors, scholars, and community come together, breaking boundaries through art, dialogue, and celebration.”

In the days leading up to his highly anticipated presentation on the global stage, Édouard Duval-Carrié is not retreating into isolation but opening his doors. Inside his Little Haiti studio, where history, material, and memory converge, the internationally acclaimed artist is shaping work that will soon travel to one of the world’s most prestigious art platforms. Yet before it reaches a global audience, it is grounded here in Miami, in the Caribbean diaspora, and in the layered narratives that have long defined his practice.

This moment offers a rare glimpse into the mind of an artist at a pivotal point in his career. What emerges is not just a body of work in progress, but also a deeper exploration of Haiti’s place within global discourse, one that challenges perceptions, reframes history, and invites audiences to a more nuanced understanding of identity and cultural legacy.

Q&A with Édouard Duval-Carrié

At this stage of developing work for Venice, what does your day-to-day creative process look like? Are you refining, experimenting, or rethinking ideas entirely?

I am always striving to do all three. It’s necessary within the scope of my work and the narratives I aim to bring to light. With history and academia as my foundation, I work to refine what I already know, which often leads me to rethink certain approaches entirely. As for experimentation, I consider myself pluridisciplinary, so I am constantly exploring new directions—particularly with materials and mediums—to see how they can deepen and enhance the narrative.

Your work is known for its rich textures and materials. How are your material choices for this installation helping to tell the story you want the world to see?

Nothing in my work is done haphazardly. While I can’t reveal the full installation, I can say that the materials reflect both the time in which they were created and the subject matter itself. The installation incorporates a range of materials that contribute to its overall complexity. Much of the work is pre-existing, but I’ve introduced new elements that allow technology and contemporary modes of creation to interact with references to the past and tradition—creating a dialogue between past, present, and future, with history centered firmly in the now.

You’re creating something for a global audience, yet you’re revealing it first in an intimate studio setting. How do you balance those two very different contexts?

Once the work reaches a global audience, each viewer will interpret it in their own way. In the intimacy of my studio, however, I can present not only my vision but also a deeper historical context that shapes how the work is understood. I aim to position Haiti within a global narrative in a more didactic way—revealing histories that have often been buried or overlooked. My hope is that visitors leave with a more nuanced and structured understanding of Haiti’s place in the world.

When visitors step into your studio on April 24, what kind of dialogue or reaction are you hoping to spark in that immediate, in-person setting?

Each group brings different perspectives and questions. My hope is to offer clarity—or even a new way of seeing. I want the experience to be engaging and thought-provoking. Ideally, the work sparks reflection and curiosity—something every artist values hearing.

As you prepare for Venice, how are you reflecting on your artistic journey so far, and how is this moment shaping what comes next for you?

This is undoubtedly a pivotal and defining moment in my career—one I feel I have been working toward my entire life. To see Haiti represented on such a prestigious global stage, especially during a time of uncertainty for the country, is both meaningful and affirming. It reinforces what I have always believed: that Haiti is deeply deserving of recognition in the arts. Looking ahead, I will continue to situate Haiti within a global context while working to challenge and reframe misconceptions about its history and people.

For Vanessa Selk, creating space is just as important as creating programming. As the driving force behind the TOUT-MONDE Art Foundation, she works at the intersection of culture, community, and global exchange, reimagining how Caribbean art is experienced, understood, and valued.

This pre-Venice studio program is not designed as a traditional event, but as a living, evolving encounter, one that brings together artists, scholars, collectors, and community in a way that resists boundaries and expectations.

In this conversation, Selk reflects on the philosophy behind that approach, the intentional blurring of lines between local and global, and the role Miami plays as a dynamic meeting point for the Caribbean and the world.

Q&A with Vanessa Selk

This studio program feels more like a cultural moment than a traditional event—how intentional was that decision, and what experience do you hope guests take away?

Correct, we rarely conceive “traditional events” that fit into a single format, audience, or theme. Drawing on the thinking of Édouard Glissant (who developed the concept of the Tout-Monde, or “Whole-World”), we resist segmentation, fixed expectations, and hierarchies, and instead create rhizomatic relations between spaces, people, and forms.

A Pre-Venice program in Little Haiti, bringing together a community that may never have heard of the Venice Biennale with seasoned collectors and art professionals, interweaving a scholarly conversation and then transitioning into Haitian electronic music, this is the kind of constellation I enjoy curating.

I don’t know if the magic will fully take hold, but that uncertainty is precisely where its beauty lies. This is not a conventional gallery opening where things are predictable. It may feel dissonant or even chaotic, but in that friction, I believe guests will encounter something genuinely new.

You’re inviting the public into a process that is typically very private. What shifted for you in deciding to make this stage of the work visible?

Exhibitions tend to foreground finished works. I’ve always been drawn to what remains unresolved, the imperfect, the in-process, what is usually withheld from view. The trajectory behind a work can be more compelling than the work itself. This is why we are drawn to artists’ narratives: what cannot be seen but must be told.

Edouard Duval-Carrié has produced a constellation of individual pieces that contribute to his installation in Venice. What we reveal in the studio are not the works that will be shown there, but those that remain, those that did not make the voyage.

In that sense, they echo the reality of many in Little Haiti who will not attend the Venice Biennale. These works are no less conceptually rigorous or historically grounded. Rather than sidelining them, we want to reposition them here in Little Haiti. By opening this moment to the public, we invite the Miami community into the artist’s process, tracing a path between Haiti, Miami, and Venice.

Working so closely with an artist at this level requires trust. How have you and Édouard collaborated to shape both the presentation and the broader narrative surrounding this moment?

Edouard and I met when I arrived in Miami in 2016, as Cultural Attaché for the French Embassy (now Villa Albertine). He was the first artist I interviewed. We quickly connected through a shared vision and ambition to elevate Caribbean art in the U.S.

At the time, he had initiated his Global and Borderless Caribbean series, while I was developing a Caribbean-focused cultural program and launching the Tout-Monde Art Festival. Much of that early dialogue discussing, debating, imagining  took place in his studio smoking cigarettes like two old friends in Paris.He later joined the jury of the first edition of the Tout-Monde festival in 2018.

I acquired a work from his Soukounyan series, which resonated deeply with my own Caribbean background, and have since included his work in several exhibitions, including HOMO SARGASSUM, which traveled from Florida State University to the United Nations.

When we conceived this Pre-Venice Studio Night, the framework was already shared: expanding access, bringing communities, collectors, scholars, and artists into relation, and foregrounding Haiti and its histories. The project came together organically.

Success for something like this isn’t just about turnout. What does impact look like for you in terms of community, conversation, or long-term engagement?

If someone who has never heard of Edouard Duval-Carrié or the Venice Biennale encounters this work and enters into conversation with those more familiar with the art world, that is already a meaningful step. If that encounter leads to sustained engagement, and to the understanding that contemporary art is accessible, not exclusive  that is another.

Ultimately, impact would mean that contemporary art from Haiti and the Caribbean is recognized on its own terms within the global art landscape, free from clichés, simplifications, or imposed categories. I want audiences to move beyond reductive images and mental representations of “Caribbean art” and instead engage with its histories, its tensions, and its cultural complexity.

In a rapidly evolving city, how do you see organizations like TOUT-MONDE Art Foundation contributing to the preservation and elevation of Caribbean cultural identity?

Our mission is to position Caribbean cultural identity not as something confined to a region but as a shared, global condition. Caribbean culture emerges from layered histories, including Indigenous legacies, African heritage, European colonial trauma, Asian migrations, and Middle Eastern influences. In that sense, it forms what I often describe as an “archipelagic eighth continent.”

The role of the TOUT-MONDE Art FOUNDATION is to support and present Caribbean contemporary art as a universal experience that everyone can identify with, access, and collect without necessarily fully grasping its complexity. Cities like Miami are particularly fertile ground for this work, as they embody this Whole-World convergence, where multiple identities meet and continuously reshape one another.

PROGRAM DETAILS:

6.30 pm – VIP Collectors Access:

An exclusive first entry to the studio, offering privileged access to a curated selection of artworks that inspired his installation at the Venice Biennale Series, the opportunity to engage directly with the artist, and the chance to acquire some pieces at an exceptional price, ranging from $2,500 (18×18 or 18x19in) to $3,000 (18×21.5in) and $3,500 (20×21.5in).

7.30 pm – Salon Conversation:

An intimate exchange between Edouard Duval-Carrié and art historian Erica Moiah James, moderated by TMAF Artistic Director Vanessa Selk, on the significance of participating in the Venice Biennale for Haiti and the artist, and on the conceptual foundations of the forthcoming installation in Venice.

By purchasing Salon Circle tickets, guests receive a pre-ordered, limited-edition, signed copy of Edouard Duval-Carrié’s Venice catalog.

8.30 pm – Haitian Music Set by DJ Gardy Girault (Tout-moun fèt):

The evening continues with a lively, welcoming Haitian electronic DJ set. It invites guests to celebrate, connect, and feel the work’s energy beyond the studio.

Additional smaller sculptural works will be made available at 1k, with access to the Salon Conversation and Musical Gathering.

For tickets and information:

https://www.tout-monde-foundation.org/pre-venice-studio-night-edouard-duval-carrie.