Manuel Mathieu

Manuel Mathieu (born October 1986) is a Haitian contemporary visual artist recognized as a painter of abstract works that suggest figurative forms within ambiguous spaces. Mathieu draws from Haitian visual cultures and from Western art movements such as expressionism and existentialism. His practice weaves together formal techniques, Haitian contemporary art movements to explore phenomenologies of human relations as they relate to power dynamics, loyalty, love, nature, subjective experience, history writing. Mathieu’s work reflects on the intersection of individual and historical identity, examining how personal histories resonate within larger socio-political contexts. while his mother has a Phd in psychology. He has two younger sisters that both reside in Canada. When he was 15, he got closer to his cousin and groundbreaking Haitian artist Mario Benjamin. He often went to his house, a space full of magazines, art catalogues, and sculptures. There, at Benjamin’s house, he became acquainted with artists that influenced his own work, trailblazers such as Mona Hatoum and Clyfford Still.

When he was 19, Mathieu moved to Quebec, into his grandmother's house who had emigrated to Canada with her children, without her husband, a colonel under Jean Claude Duvalier's dictatorial regime. His parents associated Mathieu's artistic exploration to his struggles. When he moved to Blainville, Quebec, he began painting, as well as doing photography and video art more intensely with the support of his grandmother.

Artistic influence and style

In 2016, one year into his postgraduate program at Goldsmiths, Mathieu was involved in a near-fatal motorbike hit-and-run. He suffered a severe concussion, facial trauma, fractures of his jaw, and short-term memory loss. This experience influenced the subject of his MFA thesis show “One future.” After his physical recovery and no more visible traces of his accident, he wanted to express what lingered innately. He found a correlation between his invisible trauma and that of his country after the Duvalier dictatorship. “One Future” explored the Duvalier regime in order to address the national trauma that was scarcely being addressed in collective settings. The accident also drew him closer to his family and consolidated his friendships. Many of Manuel’s portraits are of his immediate circle. He extrapolates abstract formal techniques to portray historical Haitian figures and subject matters, creating a visual language that indicates his point-of-view through interpretative considerations. The textural, compositional, and thematic transparency in Mathieu’s work underscore his practice and deep concern to uncover the power and spiritual structures behind modes of thinking, of behaving and manifesting realities.

His paintings often re-stage archived materials such as videos and photographs to bring forth the fact of erasure, of invisibility and the consequent curiosity and questions that arise in the face of narrational voids. His work interrogates the gaps and silences in historical narratives, particularly those imposed on the Black diaspora through colonialism and marginalization. This approach has been celebrated in several recent articles where critics have praised Mathieu’s ability to bring forth narratives that question official histories while amplifying collective memories of trauma and resistance.

As a multidisciplinary artist, he draws from various musical practices— jazz improvisation and repetition— and material processes that allow him to expand and diversify his approach on a subject matter that he explores years on end.

Drawings and other media Mathieu's official website, https://www.manuelmathieu.com/, serves as a portal to his multifaceted artistic practice. Beyond painting, Mathieu explores various media, including drawing, textile, video, and installation art. His drawings, often created on a smaller scale than his paintings, have been instrumental in triggering breakthroughs in his painting technique, offering a space for experimentation and the development of new ideas.

His short films push the boundaries of conceptual narration in his perpetual study of how beliefs, and history informs our perspectives and our reactions to political and/or intimate events. One of Mathieu’s most celebrated film projects, Pendulum (2023), exemplifies this multidisciplinary approach. The project has been exhibited internationally and has garnered significant recognition, earning Mathieu the Best Short Film Award from the International Festival of Films on Art. Pendulum has been featured in major exhibitions in venues such as the Power Plant Contemporary Art, the Gallery TPW in Toronto, the Saint-Louis Art Museum, the Perez Art Museum in Miami and the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami. 2024 - Dwelling on the Invisible, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, USA 2024 - World Discovered Under Other Skies, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, USA 2024 - The End of Figuration, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, UK 2023 - Rising From the Ashes, K11 Art Foundations, Shanghai, Wuhan and Shenyang, China 2023 - World Discovered Under Other Skies, Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, Canada 2022 - Dear mélancolie, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal, Canada 2022 - Keeping Things Whole, Pilar Corrias, London, UK 2022 - Silk Road Traveler, Lethe’s wanderer, Fondation Longlati, Shanghai, China 2022 - World Discovered Under Other Skies, ICA Plug In, Winnipeg, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada 2021 - Son of Voodoo, HdM Gallery, Beijing, China 2021 - Build Within You, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles, USA 2021 - Negroland: A Landscape of Desires, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, USA 2020 - World Discovered Under Other Skies, The Power Plant Contemporary, Toronto, Canada 2020 - Survivance, Montreal Museum of Fine arts, Montreal, Canada 2019 - Wu ji, HDM Gallery, Beijing, China 2018 - The Spell on You, Maruani Mercier, Brussels, Belgium 2018 - Nobody is watching, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, USA 2017 - Truth to Power, Tiwani Contemporary Gallery, London, UK 2017 - Art Brussels, Maruani Mercier, Brussels, Belgium 2016 - One Future, Goldsmiths Graduating Show, UK 2012 - Prémices / Open-Ended, Montréal, arts interculturels, Montreal, Canada

Group 2026 - 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Italia 2026 - in relation to stillness, Peter Blum Gallery, New York, USA 2025 - Seoul Mediacity Biennale, South Korea 2025 - The Abstract Future, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, USA 2025 - Time Isn’t Real, Art Gallery of Burlington, USA 2024 - Launching A New Era, Yuan ART MUSEUM, Beijing, China 2024 - Toronto Biennial of Art: Precarious Joys, TPW Gallery, Toronto, Canada 2024 - Abstraction (re)creation, Consortium Museum, Dijon, France 2024 - Soft Power, DAS MINSK Kunsthaus, Potsdam, Allemagne 2024 - Ré-enchantement, Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France 2024 - Les doigts dans la terre, les yeux vers le ciel, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal, Canada 2023 - Riopelle, à la croisée des temps, Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa, Canada 2023 - SHIFT: Ecologies of Fashion, Form + Textile, Griffin Art Projects, Vancouver, Canada 2023 - Julien Creuzet : Oh téléphone, oracle noir (...), Le Magasin Centre national d’art contemporain, Grenoble, France 2023 - Elsewheres, UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, USA 2023 - A voice answering a voice, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Los Angeles, USA 2023 - Hervé Télémaque: Double Language, digital program, Serpentine, London, UK 2022 - Body Language, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, USA 2022 - Fellbach Triennial, Fellbach, Allemagne 2021 - Fragments of Epic Memory, AGO - Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada 2021 - Social Works II, Gagosian, London, UK 2021 - In the Eye of the Storm, Z33 House for Contemporary Art and Architecture, Hasselt, Belgique 2021 - North by Northeast : Contemporary Canadian Painting, Kasmin, New York, USA 2021 - La machine qui enseignait des airs aux oiseaux, Contemporary Art Museum of Montreal, Montreal, Canada 2020 - Relations: Diaspora and Painting, Phi Foundation, Montreal, Canada 2019 - The other side of now, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, USA 2019 - Over my Black Body, Galerie de l'UQAM, Montreal, Canada 2018 - Arco Madrid, Maruani Mercier, Madrid, Spain 2018 - CIRCA 2018 benefit exhibition, Montreal, Canada 2018 - Playlist, Antoine Ertaskiran, Montreal, Canada 2018 - Here we are here: Black contemporary Canadian artist, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada 2017 - We are all very anxious, Dye House 451, London, UK 2017 - In-visibilité Ostentatoire, Fondation Clement, Martinique 2016 - Deptford X Festival, London, UK (commissioned work) National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal National Gallery of Canada Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec Claridge Collection Collection Desjardins Collection Fonds Hamelys Collection Majudia KPMG RBC TD Bank Corporate Art Collection

LEBANON

Aïshti

CHINA

Start Museum Cloud CAC Contemporary Gallery Kunming Longlati Foundation Luokung Technology Cor

ISRAEL

Igal Ahouvi Collection

Awards

2025 - Ordre des Arts et des lettres du Québec 2024 - King Charles III Coronation Medal 2023 - Best short film, International Festival of Films on Art, Canada 2020 - Sobey Art Award, Canada 2015 - Fig2, United Kingdom