Spring exhibitions trace memory and metamorphosis shaped by Haitian heritage

Susan Bland

12 Jan 2026

Didier William's "Recovery to Reconnaissance: Haiti to Miami," 2024, a painted and carved panel depicting three figures crossing waist-deep water, a pile of skulls beneath their feet, as lighting strikes them and the water. — "Recovery and Reconnaissance: Haiti to Miami," 2024, by artist Didier William. Acrylic, ink, and wood carving on panel; 70-by-106 inches. Photo courtesy of Didier William and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich/Paris.

The Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech’s spring exhibitions feature solo shows by two artists shaped by Haitian heritage and diasporic experience.

Abigail Lucien transforms organic matter into enduring forms that reflect on hybridity, permanence, and place, while Didier William presents richly layered works that combine painting and carving and address questions of memory, movement, and belonging. Together, their exhibitions create a dialogue across forms, suspended states, and the histories carried by migration.

Abigail Lucien: “Molt” and “Living in Brilliant Suspension": Didier William open with a reception on Thursday, Jan. 29, from 4-6 p.m. in the Grand Lobby. Ahead of the reception, Lucien and William — joined by “Living in Brilliant Suspension” curator Jerry Philogene — will participate in an artist panel discussion with Brian Holcombe, the center’s director of visual arts, from 3–4 p.m. in the Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre.

The galleries and all related events are free and open to the public.

Abigail Lucien: “Molt”

Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery and Sherwood Payne Quillen '71 Reception Gallery

Thursday, Jan. 29-Saturday, April 18

In Lucien’s work, what is commonly seen as ephemeral is given permanence: Molted royal palm fronds pause their decay in iron, fruit evades its possibility of expiration through gaining immortality in bronze, flowers cease to wilt through softening into pigment. Simultaneously, other ordinarily fixed substances become fluid: architectural bricks risk melting, heat gains visibility through molten traces on paper, and woven palm bags suggest a collapsing of space into a cosmic-like perpetuity.

Abigail Lucien's "If I Should Stay," 2023, a cast iron figure of the back of a bird with its wings outstretched atop a bouquet of flowers, courtesy of the artist. — "If I Should Stay," 2023, by artist Abigail Lucien. Cast iron; 16-by-15-by-16 inches. Photo courtesy of Abigail Lucien.

“Molt” plays upon the liquid state of matter that the collection of objects in this exhibition have undergone through the process of their creation while also centering this transitional spell as not only a means to an end, but a state of being to be honored on its own.

Steeped into a tincture, hibiscus, Haiti’s national flower, stains a short poem along the gallery’s walls, reciting the fateful union of two islands as tragic lovers. Hibiscus is featured again in the exhibition, this time suspended in 50 pounds of cast soap. Each block’s color shifts depending on how long the petals were steeped. Here, soap becomes a metaphor for purity as it blends with the hibiscus' sanguine essence.

Accompanying the floral wall pigment are three steel papilio aristor, the scarce Haitian swallowtail. A recurrent motif in Lucien’s work, the swallowtail butterflies embody freedom in movement and imply multiple and transitory homes. Despite being scientifically registered to one side of the island yet the official symbol of the opposite side, the Afrotropical subspecies moves unconstrained by the national boundaries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

A Haitian American interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, literature, and time-based media, Lucien’s practice addresses themes of (be)longing, futurity, myth, and place by considering the relationship to inherited colonial structures and systems of belief and care. Lucien is based in New York and is an assistant professor and sculpture head in the Department of Art and Art History at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

“Living in Brilliant Suspension": Didier William

Curated by Jerry Philogene and organized by ArtYard

Ruth C. Horton Gallery

Thursday, Jan. 29-Saturday, April 18

In the artworks included in “Living in Brilliant Suspension,” the multidisciplinary artist explores the relationships between the body, the ground, the land, and guarded memories and histories. William’s paintings are complex composites that blend the mediums and techniques of painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, and woodcarving.

Expounding upon the immigrant experience and the kinetic life of displaced people, William’s works explore such spaces, capturing generational connections and memories in part through their vibrant and brilliant textures and materiality, their distinctive painted surfaces as poignant as they are aesthetically riveting.

His large-scale mixed media paintings are populated with heroic, Rubenesque bodies that unapologetically refuse gender definition or to be tethered to the ground. They are suspended in the air as if in flight or poised to enter another realm of being.

Featuring works produced between 2021-25, “Living in Brilliant Suspension” offers poetic reflections on contemporary narratives about the act of living and the limitations to belonging. The images propose the imaginary and the metaphysical as liberatory spaces empowered by nongravitational stability.

Originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. William earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an Master of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking from Yale University School of Art. William is currently associate professor of expanded print at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

“Abigail Lucien: Molt” and “Living in Brilliant Suspension: Didier William” are supported in part by the estate of C. Edward Marr Jr. '84.

Curator-led gallery tours

Take a deep dive into the exhibitions with the center’s monthly noontime curator tour, “Beyond the Frame.” Join Holcombe on the second Thursday of every month. Starting promptly at noon in the Grand Lobby, the tours are free and open to the public.

Holcombe will provide expert insight and contextualization, offer behind-the-scenes glimpses into the acquisition and installation processes, and answer participant questions. Learn more about the artists featured in the galleries and their works, including historical and thematic contexts, and be inspired to look at art and the creative process in new ways.

There will be three tours offered for the center’s spring exhibitions on Feb. 12, March 12, and April 9.

Visiting the galleries

Located at 190 Alumni Mall, the Center for the Arts’ galleries are open on Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Parking is available in the North End Parking Garage on Turner Street. When not staffed for a special event, visitors may park in the garage by taking a ticket at entry and paying with Visa or Mastercard upon exit. Find more parking details online.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Jonathan Boulter at least 10 days prior to the event at 540-231-5300 or email jboulter@vt.edu during regular business hours.