Manuel Mathieu: Liberations

1 February 2025 – 1 April 2025

About the Exhibition

Organized & Circulated By

MacKenzie Art Gallery

Galleries

Shumiatcher Theatre

Liberations is a program of recent video and film works by Haitian-Canadian artist Manuel Mathieu. His films are a poetic exploration of political revolt, spiritual resilience, intergenerational legacies, and movement. In DIFE (2024), translating to ‘fire’ in Creole, Mathieu documents scenes from demonstrations led by protesters in Port-au-Prince over the last three years.  Informed by the artist’s upbringing in Haiti, this video brings attention to the effects of enduring socio-political and economic instability in Haiti and the ongoing struggle against forced US-led foreign intervention. As in many uprisings, fire plays a significant role in communicating dissent during a collective awakening. In Mathieu’s work, the flame can also symbolize the spiritual and material potential for liberation. In Unity in Darkness (2023), fire is explored through the intimate exchange of two matchsticks keeping each other’s flames alight. The two flames fuse into one against a dimly-lit space, meditating on the entanglement of our humanity and our shared futures. In the award-winning short film, Pendulum (2023), Mathieu contemplates the fraught legacies of transatlantic violence on the body, labour, power, and dreams of freedom. Pendulum presents a potent spiritual choreography between a matriarchal knowledge keeper and a group of men. The film’s visceral and rhythmic movement reflects a lurching and cyclical experience of time—alternating between feelings of tension and release between the past and future. 

Works on view 

DIFE, 2024, 4:06 min

Pendulum, 2023, 11:00 min

Unity in Darkness, 2023, 2:30 min

About the artist

Manuel Mathieu was born in 1986, the same year that saw the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti.  He is a multidisciplinary artist who explores themes of historical violence, erasure, and spiritual legacy through a unique abstract visual language. Influenced by his Haitian upbringing and immigration to Montréal, Mathieu’s art challenges traditional norms and conveys meaning through spiritual apparition. Mathieu’s approach to his work favours process and discovery, which allows it to contribute to a shared consciousness.  

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