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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, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; lives and works in Chicago, IL, USA) is known for his exploration of memory, identity, and cultural narratives through a multidisciplinary practice spanning painting, drawing, collage, and printmaking. His work reflects on both personal and collective histories, weaving together fragments of experience to create richly layered visual worlds.

Souffrant studied at the University of Illinois Chicago and has exhibited at institutions including The Carr Center, Detroit, MI, and the Harvey Museum, Talladega, AL. In April 2024, he presented his first solo exhibition with Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery in Dubai, followed by a second solo exhibition at the gallery’s Luxembourg space in February 2025.

His work is held in numerous private and institutional collections, including the Reiffers Art Initiatives Collection (Paris, France), the Charles Riva Collection (Brussels, Belgium), the Schorr Family Collection (New York, USA), the Hubert Neumann Collection (New York, USA), and the Lio Malca Collection, with locations in New York, Ibiza, and Tulum.

Recently, his work was featured at Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm as part of When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, the landmark exhibition conceived and organized by Zeitz MOCAA. Olivier Souffrant will present his new solo exhibition at Zidoun‐Bossuyt Gallery in Paris in September 2026.