Jean-Ulrick Désert
Jean-Ulrick Désert is a Haitian visual and conceptual artist who uses his work to engage with social and cultural practices. Désert received his degrees at Cooper Union and Columbia University in New York. Désert has lectured and been invited as a critic at Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Humboldt University and l’école supérieur des beaux arts.
Désert’s visual art spans many mediums and methods. Emerging from a tradition of conceptual work engaged with social/cultural practices, his artworks vary in forms such as billboards, actions, paintings, site-specific sculptures, video and objects. Known for his “Negerhosen2000” and his provocative “Burqa Project”, Désert often combines cultural iconographies and historical metaphor to disrupt, alter and shift pre-supposed meaning. He has said his practice may be characterized as visualizing “conspicuous invisibility”.
Désert has exhibited widely at such venues as The Brooklyn Museum, Cité Internationale des Arts, The NGBK in galleries and public venues in Munich, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Ghent, and Brussels. He is the recipient of awards, public commissions, private philanthropy, including LMCC, Villa Waldberta/ Muenchen-kulturreferat and Cité des Arts (France). Désert represented Haiti and Germany in the 2009 Havana Biennial. In 2012, Désert was involved in the Artist Talk, Close Encounters of the Caribbean Kind on 26 May 2012, organised in cooperation with Kunsthal KAdE and Framer Framed. This event was in association with the Kunsthal KAdE’s exhibition Who More Sci-Fi Than Us, curated by Nancy Hoffmann.
Désert currently lives and works in Berlin.
- jean ulrick desert
