Didier William, Lorimer Park, Sanctuary Park. Image courtesy of the artist.
Logan Lecture: Didier William
Didier William uses vivid colors and bold patterns to evoke memories of growing up in Miami as an immigrant from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Inspired by Haitian history, language, and mythology, and personal experience, William unpacks the legacies of colonialism, social resistance, and the struggle for political agency. Incorporating traditions from painting, collage, wood carving, and printmaking, he materially visualizes the intersections of identity and culture.
Powerful, faceless figures appear in William’s otherworldly, electrified landscapes. Their bodies, covered with carved eyes conscript the viewer into a flamboyant narrative made deliberately queer by refusing explicit sex and gender signifiers. “It’s a way for the figures in my paintings to return the curios gaze,” comments Williams. “Not just with their eyes, but with every square inch of their skin.”
Rendering his figures with larger-than-life anatomies, William transforms them into supernatural beings or what he calls “Titans.” His humanoid forms touch, wrestle, and embrace as they seek out tenderness, care, and belonging. They often appear to float or at least try to overcome the forces of gravity as they aim for higher realms.
This event is part of the 2025-26 Logan Lecture Series.
Didier William, Joy is Flight. Image courtesy of the artist.
Didier William, Cursed Grounds - Totem Between Here and Home. Image courtesy of the artist.
Didier William, Fruit Tree-Hanging Cypress. Image courtesy of the artist.
Didier William, Recovery and Reconnaissance, Haiti to Miami. Image courtesy of the artist.
Artist Bio
Born in 1983 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Didier William earned his BFA in 2007 from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, and MFA in 2009 from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. His work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. His work is in the collections of Carnegie Museum of Art; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Denver Art Museum; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and Minneapolis Institute of Art. His awards include a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2020) and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant (2022). William lives in Philadelphia and is a professor at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Since 2007, the Logan Lecture Series at the Denver Art Museum has presented talks by over 120 contemporary artists. Organized by the Modern and Contemporary Art department, the series is made possible through the generous support of Vicki and Kent Logan.
