Widline Cadet b. 1992

Widline Cadet practice is rooted in photography and includes video, sound, sculpture, performance, and installation. Her work centers her family’s lived experience of immigrating from Haiti to the United States as source material to explore the complexities of Black diasporic life and survival. 

Curious about her family history and the generation that preceded her, Cadet began to photograph her family members in effort to expand her family’s existing small archive. However, as graduate studies limited her time and access to family, Cadet turned the camera on herself, examining her own inner self and how it had been influenced by her migration. Motifs in her pictures refer to her past, such as sprigs of the bougainvillea that grew around her parental house in Haiti, and gingham dresses modelled after her old school uniform.

As many of Cadet’s relatives do not exist in photographs, Cadet considers her photographs to equally embody someone else. The photographs serve as an intergenerational way of knowing and imaging someone despite never meeting them. 

Cadet earned her BA in studio art from the City College of New York and an MFA from Syracuse University. She a recipient of a 2013 Mortimer-Hays Brandeis Traveling Fellowship, a 2018 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture artist in resident, a 2019 Lighthouse Works fellow, a 2019 Syracuse University VPA Turner artist in resident, a 2020 Lit List finalist, the 2020 Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Snider Prize winner, a recipient of a 2020 NYFA / JGS Fellowship in photography, a 2020-21 artist in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and a 2021-2022 visual arts fellow at The Fine Arts Work Center. Recent solo exhibitions include Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, NL, and group exhibitions include Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Somerset House, London, UK; Fotografiska Museum, New York, NY; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; MoCP, Chicago, IL; and Express Newark, Newark, NJ. 

Her work has been featured in Aperture Magazine, FOAM, The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Financial Times, Wallpaper* among others. Cadet has exhibited in the U.S. and internationally. Her work is held in various public and private collections including, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Huis Marseille, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), The Milwaukee Art Museum, The Princeton University Art Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Crocker Museum.