The Tamesis
“Widline is answering pressing questions in an open way, like an invitation,” said Kristen Gaylord, MAM Hertzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts. “This work is not just about what was lost, but what she built in its place.”
Cadet, sweet, thoughtful but reserved, was born in Haiti and lived there until she was 10 years old. Her mother immigrated to the United States when Cadet was young, and the photographer joined her a few years later.
Her early memories of Haiti are hazy, a feeling she evokes in many of her photographs. “I remember walking to school every morning with my sister,” Cadet said, “in uniform, passing these plants and flora along the way.” Beyond that, she has few coherent memories of her girlhood.
Students also have very few impressions of their mothers in their early years. “One day she was there, and then one day she wasn’t there,” she said.
For much of her childhood, Cadette’s relationship with her mother was maintained through occasional phone calls and more specific photographs. Once or twice a year, Cadet’s father would hire a photographer to take formal portraits of Cadet and her sister and send them to Cadet’s mother. Cadette later discovered one such photo in a book in her mother’s New York apartment in Washington Heights; in it, the sisters stood side by side, wearing complementary red and pink dresses. They wore matching white socks and Mary Janes. Everyone held a stuffed toy in their hands and had a big smile on their face.
“photo [were] “It was a way for my mom to keep tabs on us when we were in Haiti,” Card said. “They are objects that can transcend distance and time.”
The student reconfigured these memories in her photos Si Ou Ta Dwe Bliye Wout Lakay Ou (Lè Tout Limyè Yo Etenn) (Should you forget your way home (When all the lights go out). The work centers on twin women wearing plaid dresses replicating cadet school uniforms, their backs turned and their faces obscured as they enter dense bush. The camera lingers behind them, as if following the girls into an unknown world.
