From the Foreword by Paul B. Niell:

“To decolonize refinement, to us, is to critique the role of visual and material culture in the constitution of the coloniality of power from 1492 to the present from the myriad perspectives of the marginalized. Through this collaboration with Edouard Duval-Carrié, we have come to know an artist who grapples with the coloniality of art and its histography. By his critically acclaimed body of work, Edouard has committed himself to opening up spaces of contemplation, critical reflection, and paradox, where the images and objects of empire sometimes become the very agents employed to challenge and unsettle the conventions that shape the way we see the world.”

The work of Edouard Duval-Carrié, a Haitian-born painter and sculptor, often engages and complicates the legacy of refinement in the Caribbean. He is an artist of both the modern and colonial worlds and incorporates the very products of modernity into his work―from plastics to photographs―cleverly juxtaposing refined materials with images to critique the processes of modern fabrication through historical systems of oppression, stratification, and invisibility.

This catalog adopts the theme of ‘refinement’ and seeks to decolonize this notion through a juxtaposition of art and historical artifacts from the southeastern United States with Duval-Carrié’s contemporary work.