Holding Court: Tire Machèt and the Sea, 2025
oil on canvas
44 × 60 in
Stormy Embrace, 2026oil on canvas
44 x 46 in
Pierced Heart, Fierce Return, 2025oil on canvas
29 x 54 in / 45 1/2 x 65 in (diptych)
Fisherman’s Grove, 2025
oil on canvas
44 × 60 in
Madjeen Isaac is a first-generation Haitian-American artist whose practice examines ideas of home, diaspora, belonging, and environmental change. Drawing from the landscapes of her native Brooklyn and her ancestral homeland of Haiti, Isaac constructs imagined environments that move between memory, experience, and speculative possibility.
Central to her work is the lakou, the communal yard embedded within Haitian social and cultural life. Isaac reimagines these spaces as evolving sites shaped by migration, environmental conditions, and broader social systems. Through dreamlike landscapes and domestic settings, her paintings consider how diasporic communities create and sustain a sense of place, while imagining futures rooted in autonomy, resistance, and collective care.
Isaac holds a BFA in Fine Arts from the Fashion Institute of Technology and an MA in Art + Education and Community Practice from New York University. She has participated in residencies and fellowships at Headlands Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Smack Mellon, BRIC, The Laundromat Project, and Haiti Cultural Exchange. Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Smack Mellon, Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, and the Frost Art Museum.
Isaac is a recipient of the 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Painting and support from The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. In 2023, she collaborated with KITH on an Artist Series capsule collection for Black History Month.