MILWAUKEE, WI.- The Milwaukee Art Museum announces Currents 40: Widline Cadet, the first solo museum exhibition in the United States by artist Widline Cadet and the first full presentation of her ambitious, nearly decade-long project Seremoni Disparisyon (Ritual [Dis]Appearance). On view May 8 through August 9, 2026, the exhibition marks a defining moment in Cadet’s career and a major contribution to contemporary photography and media-based art.

Working across photography, video, and installation, Cadet explores Black diasporic life through themes of migration, memory, absence, and belonging. Rooted in lived experience and shaped by displacement between Haiti and the United States, Seremoni Disparisyon transforms personal history into a dreamlike, proxy world—one that resists fixed narratives and instead unfolds through repetition, doubling, and carefully staged imagery.

Cadet began the project by photographing members of her extended family in response to the scarcity of ancestral images passed down through generations. Increasingly limited access to her relatives abroad as well as generational transformation amongst her family in the U.S. inspired the artist to turn the camera toward herself and those around her, creating a “living archive.” Across the exhibition, autobiographical details—such as re-created domestic interiors, clothing, and gestures—bridge past and present, presence and disappearance.

“The Milwaukee Art Museum holds one of the world’s outstanding collections of 20th-century Haitian art and it is essential that we also make space for contemporary artists who are shaping how diasporic histories are understood today,” said Kim Sajet, Donna and Donald Baumgartner Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum. “Widline Cadet’s work brings those histories into the present, offering audiences a living, contemporary perspective that deepens how Haitian art is seen and understood at MAM.”

Installed in the Museum’s Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts, the exhibition highlights Cadet’s innovative approach to image-making and display within a program known for advancing contemporary photography and media art. Photographs appear alongside video, found imagery, and sculptural elements, often presented in unexpected configurations that disrupt traditional modes of photographic viewing. The result is an immersive experience that invites viewers to encounter images not simply as documents, but as evolving sites of memory and meaning.

“In Seremoni Disparisyon (Ritual [Dis]Appearance), Widline Cadet creates an intimate world centered on Black diasporic life that is grounded in her own experience,” said Kristen Gaylord, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts. “Yet, like all great art, her work reaches beyond the personal to address topics broadly relevant to us all, including community and belonging, the gaps of family histories, and maintaining connection across distance and loss.”

The Milwaukee Art Museum established an early relationship with Cadet through the acquisition of her work in 2021, continuing a tradition of supporting emerging artists. Currents 40: Widline Cadet reflects the Museum’s belief in the importance of sustained institutional support as artists develop ambitious, long-term bodies of work.

Widline Cadet (b. 1992, Pétion-Ville, Ayiti) earned her MFA from Syracuse University after completing her BA in studio art from the City College of New York. Her work has been exhibited and published widely and resides in numerous private and public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; and Milwaukee Art Museum. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2025), the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2020), and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2018). Her first monograph, Ritual [Dis]Appearance / Seremoni disparisyon, was published by Black Mountains Studio in May 2025. Cadet lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.