Princeton Cangé

Region: MFA Annual

 I pull from Haitian history and vodou cosmology, Christian religious iconography, and contemporary life to create richly colored narrative paintings, drawings, and prints. Pulling from the rich tapestry of Haiti’s cultural heritage, I intertwine fact and fiction to allow room for speculation, contemplation, anger, and desire.

My practice delves into the spaces where mythology, history, and contemporary American life merge, creating opportunities to imagine what liberation, escape, surrender, and even doom might look like for Black people—and by extension, for humanity and our shared ecosystem.

The Haitian Revolution, one of the most significant and under understood events in global history, informs much of my work. C.L.R. James’s “The Black Jacobins” provides a foundation for examining the broader implications of Black liberation movements, while the history and practice of vodou expand my understanding of syncretism and creolization not only as modes of survival and evolution, but also as ways of making.