It’s a credit to Olivier Souffrant that he speaks so highly of our digital world. Not to say I don’t find the advantages of a good Google Image search, but Souffrant feels genuinely excited to be an artist making work in 2026. I met him first in his makeshift studio on a rooftop in Mexico City, ahead of exhibiting work with Stems Gallery at the world renowned ZONAMACO fair, because it seems like the ideal vantage point to finish his paintings. It’s beside the point that he just came from Chicago in the dead of winter to one of the great art metropolises that tends to have weather one would call temperate in January, because his excitement seems palpable beyond location. Born Olivier Jean-Daniel Souffrant in 1994 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the Chicago painter is confidently and happily chasing his heroes. He doesn’t hide his influences and the ways in which they shape his visual aesthetic. The nods to Basquiat, Beardon, Picasso are all there and intended to be so.
I find all of this to be pleasantly surprising and refreshing: an artist unafraid to embrace the past and present, but also an artist uninhibited to ask difficult questions about the future of art-making and the gallery-driven art market. I mention his confidence as a strong point because there is something else he wants from this career path: to give art back to people but also to not be the poster child or embodiment of expectation. He wants to be Olivier and he wants to stand on the shoulders of giants and he wants it to be vividly obvious. What he believes, and what I believe in seeing the works in person and speaking to him, is that contemporary inventiveness mixed with understanding the DNA structure of the work of past masters will create something original and undoubtedly, him. In other words, he is daring himself to be great.
It’s been a worldly story for Souffrant, from shows in Luxembourg and New York, to two solo shows with STEMS at their Paris and Brussels galleries, respectively, and now showing with them in Mexico City, all the while calling Chicago home and Haiti his heart. One of his greatest strengths is earnestness and work ethic: Souffrant wanted this, and now is his time to show you how he did it.
Evan Pricco: You’ve just arrived in Mexico City with your work. How does it feel? Are you getting settled in?
Olivier Souffrant: I had to get acclimated, find paint and all that stuff. I’m from Haiti, so Mexico’s my type of weather. It’s very hard to work in Chicago when it’s super cold; you can’t really do anything but stay home. Here I’m on a rooftop. I hit up the building manager this morning and I said “There’s this unused space on the roof, if I clean it can I set my studio up here?” So I’m on a roof in Mexico City rather than in the negative-three-degrees of Chicago for a few weeks. Not bad…
EP: Perfect. This is a good chance to talk about your process because I saw your work digitally for the presentation with STEMS at ZONAMACO, but seeing it now behind you in the daylight, there’s new life to it. You have multiple dimensions in your paintings — layers, organization, digital, collage, hand-done elements. Can you explain how you compose a work?
OS: First, I want to explain how this started. I’m inspired by musicians who sample, chop-up music, and make something new. Then there’s Romare Bearden who is a top artist for me — he basically started collage in a way that felt intellectual. I thought, “How can I do the same but in a 21st-century way?” I started with cutouts, magazines, papers, and making collages. Then I realized really quickly that we live in a digital world. Over the last five or six years, the influx and overload of images online hit me. I was thinking, “Why can’t I make my art go more digital?” I think I said this in 2015 and nobody really understood me then.
I stand on the shoulders of giants — van Gogh, Picasso, Richard Hamilton, even the Pop Art movement. These were my heroes, where I wanted to go. So I started to go online, to Getty Images and Pinterest, and copied images, cropped them, and composed them digitally. I applied Bearden’s collage technique to a digital realm. I believed the Warhol quote — “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” — and I borrowed imagery to make new pieces. You can see references to Basquiat, the old masters, Caravaggio for light, etc. Initially people were like, “What are you doing?”
EP: So you digitally compose and then hand paint on top of the digital composition? Is that right?
OS: That’s right. I make it on a computer, print it on canvas, and then paint on top. I add oil pastel, spray paint, collage elements, sometimes canvas-on-canvas collage. It creates a three-dimensional aspect.
EP: I read a note online that because you grew up in Haiti with limited resources you had to find new ways to compose imagery. Is that true? I couldn’t tell if that was a generalized statement or something you had said.
OS: Oh, it’s very true. In Haiti, we didn’t have many resources, so we used what we had. When I went to art school in the States, I couldn’t afford materials after paying tuition. They give you a list — oil paints, canvas — and I just couldn’t afford it. I had to find another way: the computer. It’s relatively cheap. I live in a digital era where images are everywhere, so I used what was readily available. And it wasn’t just that I couldn’t afford materials, I couldn’t afford housing at one point. I stayed on campus and sometimes slept in the bathroom because I was kind of homeless.
EP: Wait, wait. You slept in the bathroom while you were still a student?
OS: Yeah, I would sleep in a bathroom when I couldn’t afford housing. I would run to the library when it closed at five; the art school closed around 5:45 or 6:00, so I used the library and print facilities. I would print on canvas after midnight when everyone left, printing and printing. That gave me purpose.
EP: So you were teaching yourself to be an image maker on the fly, using limited resources. You were learning from the masters while teaching yourself how to make their images, and then, in your way, your own images.
OS: Exactly. Art school shows you techniques — painting, color theory — but not how to be an artist in the world. You have to bring something different. I wanted to be a rebel, not an academic, and I applied masters’ techniques in a contemporary collage way.
EP: What did you know about art growing up in Haiti? Did you have a sense of what art could become?
OS: My mother had a substantial amount of artwork in the house before the 2010 earthquake, but I didn’t pay attention to it then. Haiti is known for its art, but I left young and didn’t dive deeply into Haitian art. I studied economics, finance, and communication initially — my parents weren’t keen on art as my profession — but I told my mom, “Just wait and see.” I started posting my work online and it got interest. Then one day, someone named Stefan Simchowitz reached out and wanted to buy paintings. Things started to pick up.
Eventually Kravets Wehby Gallery in New York picked me up around COVID. They agreed to try my work; I sent three pieces to New York and they sold instantly. That was the first substantial money I received, and it pushed me to pursue art. Kravets introduced me to people and galleries and the momentum grew. My solo shows have sold out, including a recent show with Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery in Luxembourg.
EP: How long had you been making art before that moment?
OS: My dad was a painter — a genius. As a kid, he would make these flip books that just blew me away. My brother drew, too. I gave art a try, and by twenty I was posting online and getting attention. I was grinding, living at school, and things finally took off during COVID. It grew fast; suddenly galleries wanted to work with me. I stuck with Kravets, and they introduced me to the people at STEMS Gallery. Coming from Haiti, my house got destroyed in the earthquake, so I left at 14 or 15 to move to Chicago. It was a tough transition — getting mugged, living on the south side. Those experiences shaped me.
EP: Did your mom come with you to Chicago?
OS: She flew with me because she couldn’t leave my adoptive sisters behind after the earthquake. I was a minor and the Army insisted that she had to at least fly to the U.S. with me. We landed in Miami then went to Chicago in the dead of winter. She left a week later. I stayed with my aunt and uncle, but they weren’t used to raising kids. At 17, I was making a mess of their place, and by the time I started painting in their basement and making a bigger mess, they kicked me out. I was crashing on couches, trying to figure it out. All those things led me to where I am now.
EP: Let’s talk about where you are now, and in particular, the work Portrait of a Woman Behind the Veil. Tell me about what these paintings are about, and specifically that work.
OS: For that piece I wanted to remake the Mona Lisa. I wanted a Mona Lisa that resists being fucked with. In that painting, you’ll see Louis Vuitton at the bottom — she’s draped in Louis Vuitton. I wanted to make a Lisa that combines digital elements with layers.
There’s also a conversation about Black portraiture in this work. My works are not about a Black aesthetic in the expected way. I want to take that away. Black portraiture has become an expectation — that black artists must paint the plight of black people. Basquiat, for example, wasn’t just showing suffering; he was showing blackness without emphasizing victimhood. If I paint Black figures, people will pigeonhole me as an artist who only paints about Black people. I don’t want that. I’m trying to move away from that.
EP: So, that’s actually a really important point you just made. Are you trying to move away from that? Why do you feel the need to do so? Why are you trying to remove the expectation of Black portraiture?
OS: I’m moving away because it’s the expectation people have of Black artists — that we are only supposed to depict the struggles or the plight of Black people. It’s a similar route that artists like Basquiat took. He wasn’t just trying to show suffering; he was trying to express blackness more broadly, without emphasizing pain or hardship all the time. For me, painting Black figures might categorize my work as “about Black people” or “Black art,” which isn’t my intention. I’m open to painting about many things. Yes, I can do works that focus on Black identity, but I want to be more inclusive. We’re at a point where I personally feel that Black portraiture has become somewhat redundant, in my opinion. We are a melting pot in America. I do not want to be labeled as a Black artist. I want to only be labeled as an artist. Have you heard of Bob Thompson?
EP: Yes, incredible artist who passed away way too young.
OS: Right, just an incredible painter. A Black painter, yes, but a painter. He traveled around Europe, stayed in Italy, and began to make work that was reinterpreting European old-master works in his style. But he didn’t paint Black figures. He put everyone in his paintings, and of course, amazing colors. Instead of being the guy that showed some sort of lacking or suffering, he was like, “No, no, no, no, no,” and went the other way. This was a major influence on me. I mean, of course Black men and women are and were oppressed, but I’m not trying to show that when I’m putting stuff in museums. I want to show Black people that are empowered, and Bob Thompson showed me how you could do that with color and style. He really wanted to show Black people in a different setting, using European methods or European processes.
EP: Okay, so going back to Portrait of a Woman Behind the Veil, which in itself is your interpretation of a European masterwork, what does the veil mean in that painting? Is it connected to what you are talking about here?
OS: The veil is a mask. The work is about unmasking — removing the mask that Black people feel they must wear to be accepted. The face you see is the initial face; the mask hides identity. The painting addresses that complex feeling.
EP: You mentioned anxiety and dreamlike states to me earlier. I feel like this could be about the state of the world, the state of art, the tension that exists in America. What’s happening in your new body of work for Mexico City?
OS: Lately, I’ve been experiencing sleep paralysis and being in-between dreams. I wake up but I’m not fully awake; images come to me. This new body of work comes from that in-between space; it’s dreamlike and speaks to anxiety, especially anxiety about the art world. The art world is changing and that creates pressure. The works are about waiting, uncertainty, and the sense of being in a liminal moment.
EP: Looking at the body of work for STEMS, many works feel like they capture the feeling of waiting — looking into a distance, waiting outside of the action. Is that intentional?
OS: Yes. I’m very tuned in to how galleries are closing and how repetition is dominating the market. Many galleries are struggling because of repeated, unoriginal work. My practice mixes influences from Haiti, the U.S., and global travel. I’m not a shaman, but my work reflects the moment. People are lost in art right now; I want to offer something different.
EP: Do you feel anxiety about politics or global events not related to art?
OS: I try to separate my work from politics as much as possible. When artists make explicitly political work, they often become categorized and stuck in that lane. I’m not interested in making art that is purely political to gain traction. I think about the longevity of work. Will your politically-driven piece be relevant in two or five years? Some movements, like Black Lives Matter, changed things, but I rarely support making art that only serves a political moment. That risks pigeonholing. I’m not saying artists shouldn’t address politics, but I’m personally avoiding making my practice primarily political.
EP: Is that a privilege some artists have — to dance around political themes?
Olivier: Yes. White artists can tap into an aesthetic and move on; they aren’t boxed in the same way. Black artists who embrace certain themes can get stuck because the market expects that from them. I warn young artists that a trend only lasts a few years, what then? You need to think ahead. I try to avoid being dependent on one theme.
EP: Because of the digital integration into your practice, the question will come up: How do you feel about AI and the future of art?
OS: A lot of people are using AI. I’m choosing a different approach that incorporates digital methods but keeps a human touch — painting, collage, texture. I’m also interested in ideas that decentralize art and involve more people in ownership.
The veil is a mask. The work is about unmasking — removing the mask that Black people feel they must wear to be accepted. The face you see is the initial face; the mask hides identity. The painting addresses that complex feeling.
EP: Tell me more about decentralizing art.
OS: I’m experimenting with embedding QR codes in paintings — you might not see them, but if you photograph the painting the code leads to a website explaining the work. The site could let people invest small amounts in a painting — like shares. If 200 people invest $200 each, that’s $40,000. The collector still acquires the work, but many people have a stake. It gives people access and power instead of art being gatekept by galleries. It’s like shares in a company: a low-level collector can own part of the piece. That could change how value is assigned and let communities participate.
EP: That also creates an entry point for people to feel comfortable putting money toward art. But it’s ambitious, and it requires an audience to want to share ownership, which is difficult in art.
OS: Exactly. If you can spend $10 or $15 and own a fraction, people will want to be involved. Instead of galleries dictating prices, the community helps determine value. I’m trying to give art back to people.
EP: What do you miss about Haiti — what can’t you get in the U.S.?
OS: I miss Haiti a lot. I haven’t gone back in almost a decade because it’s dangerous. My mom still lives there. I want to go back and help. When a piece of mine sold at Phillips, half went to a foundation in Haiti. I dream of having a studio there and doing philanthropic work. Mexico City feels like a mixture of Europe, Haiti, and America — I feel at home here more than in other places. But I miss Haiti deeply.
EP: You talked earlier about standing on the shoulders of giants. Who else do you feel you owe part of your practice to? Any contemporaries you look to now?
OS: There are younger artists and friends who inspire me — people who use the internet in clever ways, who remix culture in unexpected manners. I’m paying attention to contemporaries who push digital collage, hybrid practices, and who think about distribution differently. I learn a lot from peers who understand social media as a space for experimentation, not just promotion. That attitude has helped me figure out how to reach audiences without traditional gatekeepers.
EP: As a young artist, how do you balance making work that feels authentic to you while responding to market pressures?
OS: It’s hard. The market is loud and often demands repetition, but I try to keep my practice exploratory. When galleries ask for more of a piece that sold, I consider it, but I also insist on evolving. I want to innovate continuously; otherwise my work becomes a product. I owe my practice to the things that made me survive — scarcity, resilience, curiosity — and I try to preserve that.
EP: Is that the advice you would give to others?
OS: Well first I would say use what you have. Be resourceful. Don’t wait for perfect materials or conditions. Learn from the past but adapt to the present. Use technology, use community, make work that is honest. Also think long term, don’t rely on trends. Create a body of work that can grow with you. My work is a mixture of my influences and a response to the present moment. I’m trying to push digital collage into painting and to create new ways of engaging audiences, whether through QR-based participation or accessible ownership. I’m excited for people to see this evolution in person.
