ARTIST STATEMENT

Soulé Déesse is a Haitian-American interdisciplinary artist dedicated to using art as a tool for social change and as a commentary on our human and post-human identity, and on the future of race and sexuality. Raised across Haiti, Benin, Jamaica, and Cuba in a multicultural, interfaith family, her work draws on Afro-Caribbean spirituality to break down cultural and religious barriers and promote the affective connection among humans regardless of race, gender, class, and language. It also breaks down aesthetic and stylistic boundaries and moves effortlessly between painting and site-specific installation. Déesse understands her art as an experiment in human telekinesis: it is meant to cast a spell and release the powers that lie dormant within each of us as within any material. She defines her practice as Afrobaroque and digital Vodunism, merging traditional and digital media, while drawing on Afrofuturism and the global Baroque.

BIO

Déesse is an artist and educator whose work has been supported by national and international residencies, including the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), Yaddo (NY), c.r.e.t.a. rome (Italy), the Hungarian Multicultural Center (Hungary), Cholamandal Artists Village (India), Can Serrat (Spain), and Baldwin for the Arts (NY). She has received several awards, such as Best of Show at the Migrations Film Festival (The Front, New Orleans) and the Yaddo Donald and Genie Rice Filmmaker Residency Grant. In 2025, she was nominated for the Anonymous Was A Woman award (pending). Her work has been featured in Art in America, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), and Boston Art Review.

She has exhibited her work—both solo and collaboratively—across the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Recent exhibitions include the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (IN), Black Mountain College Museum & Art Center (NC), Printed Matter, Inc. (NY), Mahmoud Darwish Museum (Palestine), Bogotá Arte Contemporaneo Gallery (Colombia), Galerie Nord (Germany), Greatmore Studios (South Africa), Total Arts Gallery and the Cultural Foundation (UAE), the Katonah Museum of Art (NY), Gallery 263 (MA), and the B2 Center for Media, Arts & Performance at the Atlas Institute (CO).

She is currently Professor of the Practice and Chair of Drawing and Painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston.