A Moment of Reflection with Morel Doucet

Commissioner is thrilled to announce Morel Doucet as our second artist of season three. Watch the video above and read more about his upbringing, his life-long passion for arts and his thoughts on the future.

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The following interview is produced in partnership with The New Tropic, Miami's leading daily email for curious local, and was conducted by Commissioner and WhereBy.Us co-founder Rebekah Monson. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Morel Doucet is a multidisciplinary artist and arts educator and the second commissioned artist of Commissioner’s third season. He employs ceramics, illustrations, and prints to examine the realities of climate-gentrification, migration, and displacement within the Black diaspora communities. Doucet grew up in Miami, graduating from the New World School of the Arts and earning his B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Ceramics, with a minor in creative writing and concentration in illustration.

Tell us about your background and how you came to be an artist.

I moved from Haiti around the age of three. My parents, unfortunately, had to seek political asylum based on the political climate that was going on back in the 1980s. After about six months, they migrated from Alabama to Miami and have been here since. 

When it comes to art, I think I was at the right place at the right time. Growing up in the '90s was the peak of the magnet programs here in Miami-Dade County, and I had an art teacher in elementary school who saw raw talent within my work and encouraged me to apply to a visual arts magnet program. So from elementary school through high school at New World School for the Arts, I was being educated in the arts.

Morel Doucet, film still by Jorge Gonzalez-Graupera

So, you've been steeped in the arts for your formative years, and much of your work centers on these themes of diaspora communities, of which you are clearly a part. Was that kind of always the case? 

Being Haitian was not very popular in the early-'90s, and growing up, I tried to mask a lot of my Haitian identity. I got very good at code-switching, even through my college years. I think the idea of masking identity had a lot to do with trying to assimilate into American culture. 

I've always been in-between, and now I'm trying to navigate what it meant to be American, while embracing the traditions of my culture. The idea of identity is unique, but it's also global. Cultures intersect and they're similar to and build on each other, regardless of which part of the globe they're on. So now in my work, I try to weave these ideas together and also tell my own story.

You are a multimedia artist, but you're probably most recognized right now for your work in ceramics. How did you come to ceramics as a medium and why is it so important to your practice?

I'm very much in love with the tactile — being able to feel the material, understand it. Ceramics is the only material in the arsenal of artists that transcends time, place, and economics. Ceramics have been around since the dawn of humanity and clay has always been a fundamental part of the alchemy of the Earth. When we think of our global connection, every culture has used clay as both precious and essential to life. It's in our bodies, and we come from it, and we use it to create our culture. Almost every culture uses ceramics to demonstrate wealth, and also to share, to come together. 

Morel Doucet, film still by Jorge Gonzalez-Graupera

continued…

When Haitian African enslaved people got their independence from the French, as an act of rebellion, and as an act of claiming their agency, the two things that they did were to develop a soup from the pumpkin gourd and they drank tea. The beginning of the new year is a very big celebration for Haitians where every household makes this pumpkin gourd soup as the symbol of blessings for the year and you give it to your neighbors to wish them good fortune as well. 

In my work, you will see a lot of tea pots that highlight these concepts of complicated history. On my website you can see a white teapot called "Tea with the Queen, Reparation" that is very embellished with flora and fauna. What might happen if the French were to pay back the Haitian people the money that they took from us as our punishment for independence? What would that do for the people and for the country as a developed nation?

Without giving too much away, what did you draw inspiration from for your series for Commissioner? What excites you about the work?

The working title is "Night Garden in Moonlight The Stars Chatter." The work accompanies a poem that was written during quarantine of this year, when I had a deep moment of reflection. It's about the idea of looking at life from the beginning to end, and the things that I would hope to experience and achieve in that cycle. The idea of a garden, is a metaphor for the passing of time, as well as a site of leisure, of congregation, of deep reflection. I really want the series to express ideas of rebirth, of death, sorrow, redemption, of all these things that can be associated with the garden.

What do you think Miamians should be doing to foster the arts? 

I think Miami as a city is vast, and there’s a lot of funding, but the funding is improperly allocated. I hate to use the term "defund the police," but if we reallocate certain budgets and invest those back into the arts programs that were destroyed, to after school programs, put it into schools and resources, we can really change the narrative of how children navigate the spaces and grow in communities that they’re in. 

There are a lot of collectors in Miami, but a lot of them are buying works from the artists in New York instead of in our community. And there’s so much talent here in Miami, so it's unfortunate that it is sometimes overlooked. Organizations like Oolite, Bakehouse Art Complex, and Commissioner are putting value back into the local artists. I know that Miami artists can compete at the same caliber as artists in New York, as artists in California. We’re showing all over the world, but we lack funding and support to really achieve that vision.

And, if we can come to a point in the city where there's affordable housing for artists, then it would be a complete game-changer as well. With more intentional funding and investment from the community, Miami artists can thrive in sustaining themselves. 

Learn more about Morel and his work here.
Film by Jorge Gonzalez-Graupera.