Didier William

Didier William is a mixed-media painter originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. His work incorporates traditions in oil painting, acrylic, collage and printmaking to comment on intersections of identity and culture.

Early life and education William was born in 1983 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He grew up in Miami, Florida, and received his BFA in painting from The Maryland Institute College of Art.

Career Didier William's paintings are concerned with blackness and other identities subjected to an othering gaze and socioeconomic oppression, drawing on his experiences of immigrating to the United States from Haiti. His works embrace traditional conventions of painting in their size and planarity, but integrate collage and mixed media to reflect to layers on meaning in each piece. Didier's exploration of the gaze, Haitian Voudou, history, folklore, and identity is expressed through works that depict human figures.

Exhibits His work has been exhibited at group shows and solo exhibitions in various institutions, including The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, Bronx Museum of Art, Frederick and Freiser Gallery, The Fraenkel Gallery, and Gallery Schuster in Berlin.

2015. “Camouflage” Hap Gallery, Portland, Oregon

2017. “Swarm,” PRIZM Art Fair, Miami, Fl (2 person show with Nestor Armando Gil)

Group exhibitions 2005. “Disegno: Contemporary Drawing Exhibition,” MICA, Kansas City Art Institute, Princeton University, California College of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Art

2008. “New Akademiks”, Galerie Schuster, Berlin Germany

2009. “Summer Exhibition”, Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY

2009. “The Open,” Deitch Projects Long Island City, New York, NY

2010. “Artquake”, Renaissance fin Art, New York, NY

2010. ”I’ll let you be in my dreams, if I can be in yours”, Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, New York, NY

2012. "Mark, Scrape, Wipe, Shape," Organized by Spaceshifter Projects and curated by Sangram Majumdar and Karla Wozniak, Brooklyn, NY

2014. “Improvised Showboat,” Brooklyn, NY

2014. “No more place”, Alferro Gallery, Newark, NJ

2015. “The heart is a lonely hunter,” The Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2016. “Enlarged Fern” Moskowitz Bayse

2017. Pacific Standard Time, “Relational Undercurrents” Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA

2017. “Accordion Space,” Feigenbaum Center for Visual Arts, Union College, Schenectady. NY

2017. “Passenger Pigeon Press Anniversary Show,” La Maison D’Art, NY

2018. “Aesthetics of Matter,” Volta Art Fair, NY

2018. “Isness,” Morgan Lehman Gallery, NY

2018. “Strange Looks,” Gildar Gallery, Denver, CO

2025. "M. Florine Démosthène and Didier William: What the Body Carries," Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN

Awards 2007. Morris Louis Award for Excellence in Painting

2006 & 7. Maryland Citation for Excellence in the Arts, Office of Senator Verna Jones

2007 & 8. MFA Student Fellowship, Yale University School of Art

2009. Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship for Painting

2009, 10, & 11. Hearst Foundation Grant Recipient

2012. Artist in Residence. Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program, Brooklyn NY

2014. Artist in the Market Place, The Bronx Museum of Art

2018. Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Art