For the Miami-born artist Woody De Othello, objects carry a lot of meaning. Now based in Oakland, California, De Othello has often attempted to animate the inanimate, fashioning ceramics that breathe life into everyday objects. He has further developed this theme in a new show at Pérez Art Museum Miami (Pamm), the Haitian American artist’s first solo museum exhibition in his hometown. coming forth by day, named after the Egyptian Book of the Dead, draws on De Othello’s extensive studies into ritual objects and spirituality throughout the African diaspora, connecting his own work to ancestral beliefs.
Exploring this identity is something the artist considers perilous. He speaks proudly of Miami’s multiculturalism and Pamm’s support of Black and Caribbean art and artists, yet he also recalls his childhood in the city as one caught between cultures—at odds with his Haitian Catholic family but still ostracised at school by other Black kids because of his heritage. Even now, despite debuting at Miami’s most prestigious art museum, he worries about how his relatives will receive a show that dives into their faith’s syncretic connections to the motherland.
The Art Newspaper: How has your Miami upbringing affected your practice and worldview?
Woody De Othello: I’m a first-generation American. Both my parents are Haitian immigrants. That really shaped my experience in Miami. Growing up here, living here—it’s multicultural and layered, in the sense that there are so many different facets and pockets of Blackness. There are different variations between the cultures, and living within that was beneficial and enlightening in a lot of ways. My folks are also super Catholic, so that was a huge part of my upbringing as well.
A lot of your show concerns different African religious traditions. Is this a huge contrast with your upbringing in this very Catholic Haitian immigrant community in Miami?
It’s almost a taboo to even be looking at different African spiritualities. I feel like I’m making myself super vulnerable to the judgment of my family. But I can’t help but have these questions about not only my relationship with Catholicism but also noticing and realising that the flavour of Haitian Catholicism is very different from Roman Catholicism. I’ve been very interested in looking for the African notion, the African indigenous practices that are still embedded and syncretised within the practice of Haitian Catholicism. It’s an ongoing question. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life unpacking it.
De Othello often creates ceramics, such as Wake up (2025), that animate the inanimate, breathing life into everyday objects
Photo: Phillip Maisel; © Woody De Othello, Courtesy of the artist, Jessica Silverman, and Karma
Do you think this show is a departure from your previous work? It seems like you are trying to forge a different path for yourself as an artist and take on different subject matter.
I don’t know if it’s a complete separation. It’s more of a continuation. I believe notions of animism have always been in my work, but now the vocabulary is extending. In order for me to understand some of the things that I’m trying to tackle now, I had to approach them by looking at the animism that occurs in our everyday experiences, looking at the essence and trying to parcel out the metaphysical nature of our environment, where before anything can be made physical it must first be metaphysical.
The notions of breath and trying to capture the unseen have always been in my work, in terms of looking at things like air-conditioning vents, air purifiers and windows. I’ve always been interested in the invisible. Now I’m just adding more vocabulary to that experience. I think my work before was almost like a doorway, because there are so many ways our built environment acts as
a metaphor.
De Othello’s Ibeji (2022)—the artist’s fascination with working with ceramics comes in part from an awareness that they are “often the only remnants we have outside of fossils of humans having existed”
Photo: Eric Ruby; © Woody De Othello, Courtesy of the artist, Jessica Silverman and Karma
Do you see the themes of mourning or passage in your show? You reference the Egyptian pyramids and the Book of the Dead—those elements can certainly be linked to ideas around death and the afterlife.
Yeah, I think a lot of that is sprinkled all over the show. There’s a bronze sculpture that has these larger hands holding up these two figures embracing, but the hands are anchored to the earth. They’re almost like roots or tentacles coming from the ground. Being interested in and studying African thought, one thing that has resonated with me is the notion that our ancestors are in the ground. They’re not in the sky. It’s as if to say we’re very much tethered here on Earth.
In the show, there’s the Bantu Kongo Dikenga [the central cosmogram of the Kongo religion], which is like a version of a cross. And there’s the Kalûnga [the line on the Dikenga that divides the physical and spiritual realms], the horizontal axis that separates the vertical axis. There’s this notion of water sprinkled throughout the show, also an African thought; we emerge from the water, which, to me, makes complete sense with reference to evolution. Everything emerges from water. There’s a sculpture of a female figure, called Underneath the Line, and it’s kind of embarking on that. There are a lot of little nuggets pointing towards this idea of passage. This is also very much embedded in the fabric of working with ceramics—these artefacts that are often the only remnants we have outside of fossils of humans having existed.
- Woody De Othello: coming forth by day, Pérez Art Museum Miami, until 28 June 2026
