Widline Cadet’s Doubled Diaspora
The Haitian-born photographer explores how various media, from dusty analog photo albums to cell phone videos, store and shape personal histories of migration.
MILWAUKEE — Handmade ceramic lizards with tails that morph into flowers cling to the walls of photographer Widline Cadet’s exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum. These little creatures crouch low or grip onto the corners of the ceiling as if silently accompanying us through the artist’s first solo institutional show in the United States, marking a territory of displacement and adaptation.
Cadet, who grew up in Haiti and now lives in Los Angeles, immigrated to New York City at age 10 to reunite with her mother, who had arrived years earlier. Because immigration is a fraught, violent issue in the US, every museum exhibition that humanizes these stories feels urgent. Cadet explores concepts of separation and memory using a full range of photo-based processes that also speak to the way that various media, from dusty analog photo albums to cell phone videos, store and shape personal histories.
