Manuel Mathieu

Manuel Mathieu was born in Haiti in 1986. He obtained a BA in Visual and Media Arts at Université du Québec à Montréal and a MFA at Goldsmiths University of London.

In his work, Mathieu transcends the confines of autobiography and the fragmented narratives of racial and socio-political identities as he creates layered compositions that allude to his composite identity and overlapping interests. Self-reflection and spiritual contemplation bind his paintings to questions of collectivity. How does spontaneous reactions frame collective consciousness? How can we redefine the confines of memory and knowledge to be more inclusive of the voices that have been pushed to the margins of historical narratives and contemporary spaces? Can exposing the creative process behind painting bring awareness to the assumptions tied to set narratives?

Inextricable ties between art and politics characterize Mathieu’s childhood in Haiti. Art is a form of resilience where a creative manifestation speaks to the resourcefulness and agency of the people creating art. Mathieu carries these ideas through his work whenever he addresses themes of historical violence or erasure, to carve out space for us to consider the different futures remembering helps us create.
His creative drive comes from an urgent need to take charge of the space he occupies and contribute to generative cultural movements. By transforming his individual concerns into collective questions, his paintings offer intimate moments of ruminations.

Mathieu’s practice is expansive and outside of art-making, he is invested in institutional restructuring to broaden the breadth art spaces. He is interested in how his title as an artist can provide opportunities for collective shifts around power dynamics, politics, and thinking boundaries. He merges abstract and figurative imagery to channel Haitian visual cultures of physicality, nature, and religious symbolism. Without reacting to preconceptions of Haitian art and what the scope of his interests is, Mathieu subverts them by presenting work that is always in the process of reinventing itself.

Mathieu's work has been shown in several museums including the Pérez Art Museum Miami and the the Museum of Fine Arts Montreal. The Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal showed a solo exhibition in 2020.

Mathieu lives and works in Montreal, Canada.