Widline Cadet

Interview by Alice Grandoit-Šutka

Widline Cadet’s interdisciplinary praxis is informed by the sensitivities of Black womanhood. Born in Petion-Ville, Haiti and now residing in Los Angeles, California, her artistic language, spanning photography, sculpture, video, sound, and installation, opens up a poetics for what she calls the impossible encounter—a space where seemingly unimaginable meetings can happen.

Through the practice of making and re-making the archive, Cadet transmutes the complexities of the Haitian diasporic experience, offering meditations on memory and landscape and unearthing the technologies of Haitian lore and the interpersonal relations that weave the formation of memories together. It is the beginning of spring and the Bougainvillea, reminiscent of the flora and fauna in Haiti, begin to bloom and fill the streets of the city she now calls home with a magenta hue.

We speak ahead of the opening of her debut solo exhibition in Los Angeles, “How Far is Soon”, at Nazarian / Curcio. Her aunt (Tati) calls in the middle of our interview to check-in and at once, an entire ocean apart, I am reminded that the tone of a Haitian elder’s call of genuine concern is an act of care that makes me feel at home.

Alice Grandoit-Šutka (AGS): I have been looking forward to this moment to exchange with you since I came across your work during the exhibition, “Sé Sou Ou Mwen Mété Espwa m (I Put All My Hopes On You),” at Deli Gallery in NYC in 2021. As a first generation Haitian-New Yorker, your creative practice has resonated with me deeply. It has offered me, perhaps for the first time, access to confront intimacies related to my diasporic identity and experiences within contemporary arts institutions. To kick this conversation off, how did you begin cultivating a creative practice and what drew you to photography as a medium?

Widline Cadet (WC): Thank you so much! I got into art pretty early on when I moved to the US. I arrived right before I started sixth grade, so for my first year of junior high I didn't speak any English. I learned English that first year of middle school. In seventh grade, I started taking art classes and I think that shifted a lot of things for me. I didn't know it at the time. I had never taken art classes before. I was like, "This is nice," and then from there my interest in art progressed.

When it was time to look for a high school, I decided to strictly look for schools that had art as a focus. I ended up attending Fashion Industries and they had a photography class that I took in my junior year. From there, I just fell in love. I had never even thought about photography before then, but I loved it: being in the darkroom, being able to see this thing that magically appears when you put the paper in the chemicals. After that class ended, I found other places like ICP to take more photography classes on the weekends. Then when it came time for college, I wasn’t sure what I was doing—I went to City College as an English major but kept taking photography classes, and at some point I realized I met more of the credit requirements for an art major than an English major. So I was like, "Let me just switch majors ..." I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I think it was one of those things where I felt it was meant to be, and like it was the thing that made me feel alive and excited about life in a way I had never experienced.

At the time, I wasn’t thinking of photography as a medium, or my relationship to it. I pursued it because it brought me joy and connections. Over the years, as I've grown in my practice, I realize one of the reasons for my interest in the medium is due to my lack of access to it as a kid. I can remember being photographed maybe five or six times as a child and maybe three of them were for my passport photos. And then the other two times were when my dad would hire a photographer to take portraits of my sister and I when we were in Haiti, to bring to our mom who was living in the US.

AGS: Thank you for reminding me of the processual wonder that is photo making. You get to work with images but also with time—the suspense, anticipation, and inevitable surrender that you experience in the darkroom—this liminality feels like an important part of building an artistic language. Over the past few years you've been working with installation, film, sound, and sculpture. I'm curious how photography bridges those formats?

WC: I think about my work as an archive of sorts. I don’t want it to be an archive that is seen just through photography, but something that's more alive in different ways and can be heard and felt, whether that's through sound or through video.

Part of the frustration I've reached with photography as a medium, and the things that I'm interested in conveying, is that it can do so much but there are also limits to how much it can convey. A lot of the time, the work, and what I'm photographing, is literally frozen. The photograph is of a very short period of time. I want some things that are able to expand on what you're seeing, whether that’s in the frame or how you're seeing the thing. And so video became a really big important part of that. I've always been someone who records everything incessantly. My family is used to it. I have a very large archive of random videos—whether it's family gatherings or small moments of joy that I experience, a sound or the way the breeze is blowing a branch of a tree, all of those things became important to me. Photography wasn't always able to convey those things in the ways I wanted it to.

I’ve moved into video installation and sculptural objects as well, lately, because I want everything to be together in one space. It’s not necessarily that I like one more than the other. I think it's more that when I reach the limit of one, I try to push that limit with another medium. When photography has reached certain limits, video and sound can expand on photography for me. And when I reach my limit with video, I think about how sculptural pieces and more object-making can push the boundaries of that as well. I like the idea of trying to work through all of these different things and ways of creating a more full and encompassing archive where there are different ways of experiencing it. You're seeing it, touching it, hearing it, and maybe feeling it.

My ultimate goal would be that all of these things work together in any exhibition I put together.

“Part of the frustration I've reached with photography as a medium, and the things that I'm interested in conveying, is that it can do so much but there are also limits to how much it can convey. A lot of the time, the work, and what I'm photographing, is literally frozen. The photograph is of a very short period of time.”

Installation of “How Far is Soon?” Nazarian / Curcio, Los Angeles, April 5 – May 10, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio.

AGS: To that point, I appreciate the spatial considerations you engage throughout your exhibitions. They offer meditations on how we sensorially relate to life and a poetics that opens up space to think between objects, sound, and images, both still and moving. One of my favorite motifs of yours, that I have experienced in a few shows, is how you install and work with images of different scales and play with the edges of space as well. What do these considerations do for the ways in which people might encounter your work?

WC: Thank you! I love this idea of things that live on the edges and I find that, for me, so much of that is related to memory. I have different ways of using photographs in my practice. I have the larger, more staged works, which refer more to interiority. I also have these smaller works that are more family archive-style photographs. Through installation, I try to figure out ways to combine them and have them inhabit the same space. So part of that consideration is in the ways that I display them so that the viewer is looking down upon the images. I’m interested in the idea that not everything should be immediately visible in my exhibitions, and making the viewer work a little, whether that’s physically by moving around in different ways to see the work, mentally, or emotionally. At the ICP show I was part of in January (“To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography”), they had limited corner spaces and that's usually where I install those small images. Part of the challenge was us trying to figure out how to have the same effect—where the image is still on the edge and it's still in this little space of its own. I think a lot of it is me thinking about memories and how unclear things can be, or how out of context things can look at times, but still be very much important. I think about how to convey things that aren't necessarily easily accessible, or visible in the ways that I would like them to be. So memories and possibilities, too. And not knowing everything, not seeing everything clearly, and not being able to see things as easily as you may want to. One of the things that I've been really annoyed by in my practice is that I've been moving more and more into making works that aren't easily photographed or replicated digitally. It's very satisfying for installation purposes and it's great if you see the show in person, but it's so annoying when you're not able to see it in person, or when I'm trying to get an application for something together because I'm like, "Ugh, it just does not translate well." It can feel self-sabotaging in some ways because of that.

“I think about how to convey things that aren't necessarily easily accessible, or visible in the ways that I would like them to be…memories and possibilities, too.”

Lily Pad, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio

AGS: I don't think it's sabotage. I find it liberating. It forces you to be present in the encounter of the artwork rather than be preoccupied with capturing it.

I'm drawn to the usage of Haitian Kreyól in the naming of your works. I think as folks of the Haitian diaspora, our experiences are intrinsic to this language, and our identities and memories are formed by both our proximity to and distance from it. What is your process for incorporating Kreyól into your work?

WC: Yeah, I think the process varies actually, depending on what I'm working on. I must confess, I am a hoarder!

AGS: All good archivists are!

WC: In regards to naming, I have this long list of things that I'm amazed by, whether it's titles, or things people have said, or things I've read. There's something about the way Haitian elders speak that I find so beautifully poetic, but also makes no sense when translated into any other language. It can be a conversation that my mom and my sister are having and I think to myself, "Oh my god, this is gold." Part of it is that I'm interested in translations and language, and that plays a big part in my work. I find Kreyól to be such a beautiful language—it's really genius. How often is it that people develop a language through which they can understand their oppressor's language, but the oppressors can't understand them? Our ancestors were ahead of their time.

AGS: [Snaps] Yes indeed, indeed.

WC: I love this idea of playing around in the way that sometimes things don't translate well into English. Part of it is me being interested in how some things in my experience of being and growing up in the US, as well as growing up in Haiti, haven't translated. And some things can't be translated—or when they are translated, they become something else entirely.

A lot of the times when I just have the Kreyól title, I'm trying to speak directly to people who speak or understand Kreyól. Some things I only want to communicate to Haitians, and other things I'm like, "All right, fine, other people can see it too." I like this idea of creating different hierarchies in terms of the viewership, in terms of the experience of seeing and reading my work. I’m also thinking about what's private. I have video work where I don't have any translations, it’s just in Kreyól. If someone speaks and understands Kreyól, they have a different insight versus someone who doesn't. I had to teach myself to be fine with that. The other way that I think about it is that you don't necessarily have to speak Kreyól or understand it to feel certain things in my work, or at least I hope so. There are different ways of thinking about language for me. Language can be English or Kreyól, but language can also be how you're feeling when you're looking at the work, and not necessarily understanding the spoken language. The visual language itself can also get you into the work.

“There are different ways of thinking about language for me. Language can be English or Kreyól, but language can also be how you're feeling when you're looking at the work, and not necessarily understanding the spoken language. The visual language itself can also get you into the work.”

Installation of “How Far is Soon?” Nazarian / Curcio, Los Angeles, April 5 – May 10, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio.

AGS: My first introduction to your work was the exhibition “Sé Sou Ou Mwen Mété Espwa m.” And I remember it piquing my curiosity because it's such a personal sentiment shared between a Haitian mother and her daughter. You mention that this exhibition is an exploration of your relationship between you and your mom. What drew you to explore this relationship?

WC: Yeah, funnily enough, I was going through a really hard time with my mom at the time I put the show together. That was peak pandemic. I had just graduated from grad school in 2020 and then I moved back to New York City. I was living with my mom and it was probably one of the hardest times in our relationship. I've always had difficulty understanding and knowing my mom. I didn't know my mom as a person, I just knew her as my mom. And I think a lot of that is because of how she raised us. I never knew what she did or who she was before she had kids. I knew her as a mother and as a wife and I wasn't necessarily happy with who she was in those roles. I think part of the work was me trying to know my mom. I was like, "Who is this person, what are her hopes and dreams, and who is she when she's not my mother? Who was she before she was my mother?" And so yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about my relationships to my parents, both of my parents, but specifically my mom because that's the person who I've been closest to.

I was also separated from my mom for an extended period of time because she was living in the US and I was in Haiti. And so that, I think, created this rift in our relationship. Thinking about diaspora and the different generations of it in my family, we've all had very different lived experiences and ways of existing. For a long time we all lived in New York City, but we all had such varying experiences of what it meant to be Haitian and living in the US.

I'm fascinated by my mom’s experience in particular because I don’t think she ever intended to live the rest of her life in the US. And so that was her whole thing—all my hopes are on my kids. I think about that and the invisible weight of being of this generation, where all of our parents' hopes and dreams are laying on us, and that is a lot to contend with. It’s heavy and it's this thing that I didn't ask for, but also feel an obligation to, partly because of the sacrifices they made.

At the time of making those works and the exhibition, I was thinking about that a lot, and whether or not I wanted to live up to those expectations, whether I cared to do that. I was also thinking about how, if I have children, I don't think they'll ever fully know me because they're not going to have access to the things that made me the person that I am. For me, my relationship to Haiti and being able to go back and experience Haiti as an adult is so pivotal to the person that I've become. I think about not having access to my kids seeing where I grew up. There's a limit in terms of how much they could imagine. Talking about it now, I realize it’s the same for my mom and I.

“I think about...the invisible weight of being of this generation, where all of our parents' hopes and dreams are laying on us, and that is a lot to contend with. It’s heavy and it's this thing that I didn't ask for, but also feel an obligation to, partly because of the sacrifices they made.”

Installation of “How Far is Soon?” Nazarian / Curcio, Los Angeles, April 5 – May 10, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio.

AGS: Thank you for sharing with me. I can wholeheartedly relate to the complexities of a Haitian mother-daughter relationship. That statement personally carries an enormous, multi-temporal weight and a responsibility that can never be fulfilled. It carries with it a future that has been denied to Haitians who yearn to return to their ancestral lands, a present in which they are denied dignity, and a past that escapes them each day they spend distanced from home. There’s so many layers of grief, longing, and failed aspirations to process.

I remember, in my own journey, that a balm to heal some of these wounds with my mom was to pause for a moment and get curious about her identity beyond motherhood. You realize that she is a woman, just like you, and then your expectations shift when you holistically understand the journey she’s been on. It’s revelatory, it’s gracious, it’s generous.

WC: Uff, preach.

AGS: Let’s talk about your exploration of Haitian lore in some of your works: for example, Future Visions Arive A, (2024) The Crooked Path (2024), A Place to Belong (2024). You've been particularly exploring the Haitian lore of lougawou and I am very fascinated by what you desire to communicate about it through image-making, especially at night, in the darkness.

WC: I guess I’m thinking about these lores that I grew up with—not necessarily the lore itself, but the belief systems. I'm so fascinated by beliefs and our ideals. I grew up with my mom or my dad telling me these little stories about lougawou. It's like, "Oh, this neighbor's a lougawou, stay away from her." Things like that. Also don't go out at night because the lougawou will eat you. And this wasn't story time, this was facts.

AGS: I was going to say all lores are facts in Haitian culture. Yes. Lores as facts, shaping reality, a one-to-one narrative interpretation.

WC: I'm fascinated by that—I'm fascinated, obsessed with this idea of pure facts. And the crazy part that I think about so much is that I've lived in the US longer than I've lived in Haiti. And yet I still accept this lore as facts, and I'm so amazed by that. Even when I've been back in Haiti, I don't go out at night as an adult because I'm like, "My dad said no. Lougawou's out at night. Nobody good, nothing good comes out." I think about the ways that these things have just stayed with me, and have dictated some of the ways that I live my life in the US, despite being geographically and temporally separated.

I find that I'm fascinated by the ways that these things are internalized and then affect my behavior, affect my thinking. I'm trying to think about how I've hung on to these different things that I've collected over the years. The more time I spend in the US, the more I think I shift in terms of who I am as a person, but there are also so many things that stay constant. And I'm curious about the ways that these things will be translated or transformed, whether in my experience or in the next generations’, and what that's going to look like.

I'm not trying to make sense of it. I don't particularly care to make sense of it. I'm just fascinated by how lores travel through the body, and through different generations of diaspora.

AGS: Haitian lores sometimes feel like entities that move fluidly between science, reality, and folklore. This series provokes me to question what these embodied stories mean to us and our identities as diaspora over time.

Another recent series of work that has been intriguing to me, “An Elusive Echo,” is inspired by the architecture of your home in Haiti, as well as the architecture that you also encounter while living in Los Angeles. I am curious, what does the architectural element of breeze blocks open up for you as an artist these days?

WC: I think it opens up possibilities for me in terms of trying to figure out ways to contain these different things that I'm interested in working through in my art. I'm interested in memories that I don't have access to. I became obsessed with the breeze blocks because I can distinctly remember sitting in front of them for hours and hours in my childhood, but I can't remember the view behind them, or what I was looking at behind them. I'm always fascinated by this idea that I remember the shape of the memory, but not the memory itself.

The breeze blocks feel like they're the containers for the shape, the outline. And I think this goes back to your question about edges. A lot of the time I think about these edges of my memories, these edges of experiences that I've had that I don't really remember clearly, or in any capacity. But then I remember different, other things that are related to it. The breeze blocks are containers for holding things I don't have access to. In the work, some people don't even realize there is an image behind it, too. You get to see more of the image in the second design, but only partially. Nothing's fully visible. And so you have to work really, really, really hard to try, and even after you put in all that work, you may not get a reward for it. And that is life, unfortunately.

Installation of “How Far is Soon?” Nazarian / Curcio, Los Angeles, April 5 – May 10, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio.

AGS: Exactly. As my grandfather would say, Se La Vie. Sometimes the feeling is enough.

You’ve been living in Los Angeles for a while now and recently held your debut solo show, “How Far is Too Soon,” at Nazarian / Curcio gallery. It was an introduction to your ceramic sculpture works, with the debut of Relief #1 (2025). How was it?

WC: It was great. I think through moving here to LA and, funnily enough, through teaching, I've become more experimental in my work, which I'm really, really excited for. I've always been frustrated by how neat and how well-crafted some of my images are. And by the fact that I want there to be a little bit more messiness because my experience is messy and liquid, but the images always felt too solid in ways, some of them at least. This new work feels like…a way of getting a little bit messy. I'm still thinking about memories, but I've become more interested in this idea of becoming, not necessarily reaching an ultimate goal of being someone in particular, but the journey of becoming as a result of being in diaspora.

The show felt like I was taking a pause and examining what it is that I'm becoming, who it is that I'm becoming in different ways. Even the ceramics feel they are self-portraits, in a way. Because I'm making these plants that have become amalgams of collected experiences: aloe plants that have varying species of flowers growing on them. I'm trying to think about all of these things that I've collected over the years and what it looks like to slowly become something, one way or another.

Installation of “How Far is Soon?” Nazarian / Curcio, Los Angeles, April 5 – May 10, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian / Curcio.

AGS: That’s profound. Well thank you, Widline, for allowing us to witness your continual becoming through the creative expressions you so generously share with us. I look forward to being in conversation with your artworks for years to come.

WC: Thank you so much, Alice. This was a true pleasure. I very much enjoyed it.

Alice Grandoit-Šutka

Alice Grandoit-Šutka is a research-based designer, host, publisher, and cofounder of Deem Journal. Over the past 17 years she has developed an expansive practice that is equal parts experimental, referential, and relational, existing at the intersections of the culinary and recording arts, design, and architecture. Among these expressions, Alice is interested in building infrastructures for convening that open up our capacity to feel deeply and orient towards liberatory futures.