This work is to explore the static performance of memory in dynamic time. My friend is the protagonist in the photo, and what is recorded is a conversation between me and her about memory. This is the memory of a conversation between me and her from my viewpoint, the expression and documentation of the memory in the present time. For her, it is the experience she recalled in the past, and the memories that happened in the past are recorded through her facial expressions. The feelings you have when you see this work are memories that happened in the future.
Duan, JX. (2021) I think what I think [oil painting].
150 x 140 cm
Camberwell, London
Sort of images of work in a gallery situation
Art is the memory of the world and society.
Haiti-born, Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist, Manuel Mathieu is known for his paintings, which investigate themes of historical violence, erasure, as well as Haitian visual cultures of physicality, nature, and religious symbolism.
Marrying abstract and figurative techniques, his compositions carve out space for us to reflect on Haiti’s transformative history while inviting us to consider the different futures the act of remembering creates.
In 2015, when I had my accident, that shifted my perspective on what art is, or what it actually can be. I had to stop because I could not physically work so I spent a lot of time thinking. And I had to ask myself, if this were my last show, what would it be about? At the same time my grandmother was dying and I had to wonder what is her legacy. As you know, art is the memory of the world and society. I asked myself what it is that I am bringing into the world — what am I here to channel?
By revisiting my youth in Haiti, I understood that the Duvalier dictatorship played an important role, thirty years of trauma that we don’t talk about. After my show the residue of the accident was still present in me; I had a concussion, I lost my memory, I lost my capacity to see and hear for a while, broke my face and my jaw. I got more personal around concepts like solitude, vulnerability and self-destruction. The work has become a way for me to deal with mental and physical scars. Just like history and the land we walk on we all carry invisible scars.
Today, I am examining the common abstract space that music and painting operate in and how can a painting I’m working on, leave itself and extend its aura to another object. I am also combining Claude Parent’s drawings and Blossfeldt pictures in my mind. I am dreaming of building cities. How has it changed? I am more at peace and much behind in my readings.
Parker, R (2019). ‘We Are Rebellious Souls’: Manuel Mathieu Imagines a Caribbean of the Future. [online] Frieze. Available at: https://www.frieze.com/article/we-are-rebellious-souls-manuel-mathieu-imagines-caribbean-future [17 Jan. 2021]
The prophetess1
Mathieu, M. (2020). Manuel Mathieu. [image] Available at: https://www.manuelmathieu.com/my-gallery#3 [17 Jan. 2021].