Emancipation Print

Bio. Rénold Laurent is a Haitian artist currently based in Cambridge, MA. His dynamic and expressive paintings are rooted in imagined dialogue with his audience and between mixed media, cultural history, the present, and our collective future. He was born in Source Bretoux, a village at the foot of the Marbial Valley—a few kilometers from the city of Jacmel, Haiti. This small corner of the world might have existed in obscurity, except that it produced four of Haiti’s most famous painters: Castera Bazile, Wilmino Domond, Célestin Faustin, and Fritzner Lamour. At the age of ten, Rénold began to draw and paint under the direction of his father, Maccène Laurent, a primitif artist. Very early, he was inspired by the cultural life of his rural environment, including Rara festival music, Carnival, and the architecture of Jacmel. In 1995, in his quest to continue improving his painting techniques, he took many trips between Jacmel and Port-au-Prince to open his mind and learn more about other artists. It was through the books and catalogs of the Alliance Française library in Jacmel that he began to discover the works of Manet, Cézanne, Monet, Daly, Kandinsky, Klee, Pollock, and the names of great Haitian painters such as Hypolite, Tiga, Cédor, and Lazard; these research trips had a profound impact on his artwork. A few years later, he incorporated new perspectives and techniques into his paintings. He considers abstract painting to be the most expressive way to explore the extraordinary powers of the imagination. Laurent has collaborated with several cultural Haitian institutions, and his paintings have been exhibited in Haiti, France, and elsewhere. In 2019, he received the Heimark Artist Residence Award from Brown University's Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice. Most recently, he participated in a documentary and digital exhibition, "This Life: Black Life in the Time of Now" by the Miami Museum of the African Diaspora, Miami MOCAAD. Artist Statement My work creates visual portals that invite viewers to see differently and enter a dialogue between materials, forms, histories, and lived experiences. Through painting and mixed media, I explore memory, resistance, and spirituality, treating each work as an open space where meaning is continually shaped. Each piece becomes a meeting place between the visible and invisible, between matter and emotion.