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BIOGRAPHY

Throughout his work, Souffrant is referencing African American masters such as Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Jean-Michel Basquiat and also European painters like Botticelli, Van Gogh, and Picasso. He witnesses the coup d’état of 2004 and later the earthquake of 2010. Therefore, with his Haitian background and his lack of resources, Souffrant uses everyday materials such as magazines, online publications, computers, and mobile phone to create his paintings.
Souffrant applies digital ways to render the collage technique by using photoshop where repeatedly he cuts and pastes images, by scanning images from magazines or using free-source images from the internet, he creates a new and fresh image translated into a 2-dimensional object. These images are printed either on canvas or on aluminum panels, treated as an underpainting where the artists repaint them with acrylic and oil paint. With these techniques, Souffrant is bringing up ideas such as the over-saturation of our society with instant images and their appropriation use. His work explores the depths of emotional and physical interiors through the layering of paint and images culled from social media.

About the artist

Olivier Souffrant (b. 1994 in Port‐au‐Prince, HT, Lives and works between New York City, NY, USA and Chicago, IL, USA) is known for his exploration of memory, identity, and cultural narratives through a multidisciplinary practice that spans painting, drawing, collage, and printmaking. His work often reflects on personal and collective histories, weaving together fragments of experience to construct layered visual worlds.
He studied at the University of Illinois in Chicago and has exhibited in institutions such as The Carr Center in Detroit, MI, and the Harvey Museum in Talladega, AL. Souffrant presented his first solo exhibition at Zidoun‐Bossuyt Dubai in April 2024, followed by a second solo exhibition at Zidoun‐Bossuyt Luxembourg in February 2025.His work is held in several private and institutional collections, including the Reiffers Art Initiatives Collection (France) and the Charles Riva Collection (Belgium).
His work is currently on view at Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm as part of When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, conceived and organized by Zeitz MOCAA, alongside artists such as Akinola Lasekan, Kehinde Wiley, Michael Armitage, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Lynette Yiadom‐Boakye, and Amy Sherald.
Olivier Souffrant will present his new solo exhibition at Zidoun‐Bossuyt Gallery in Paris in September 2026.