Manuel Mathieu, b. Haiti, 1986Selfish ThinkingCanada (2017)[Source]Mathieu was born in Haiti in 1986

Manuel Mathieu, b. Haiti, 1986
Selfish Thinking
Canada (2017)
[Source]

Mathieu was born in Haiti in 1986, the same year the tyrannical Duvalier regime came to an end. For 14 years, François Duvalier kept a tight grip on power through heavily rigged elections, brutality and intimidation. When he died, in 1971, his son Jean-Claude took up the reins, leading the nation deeper into poverty and chaos, until a rebellion saw him forced into exile. Nearly three decades of corruption and violence left its mark. “There are residues of that era in the country still,” Mathieu tells me, “That’s why I think it was important for me talk about it.”

Mathieu’s accidents and his country’s history have soaked into his canvases, which are haunted by twisted cadaverous figures and amorphous shapes. Mathieu likes flowers, but even floral forms are flattened and stretched, as though they have been steamrolled or pressed and sliced into cross-sections, lending tension and threat to something as everyday as a bouquet. Violence is done to everything.