Manuel Mathieu

Every morning, when the artist Manuel Mathieu arrives at his Montreal studio, he brews some tea, lights incense, and waters his plants. Before he starts work—which, depending on the day, might mean painting, drawing, making mosaics, shaping clay, cutting fabric, or developing a short film, candle, or perfume—he changes into the paint-spattered shirt, trousers, and slippers that comprise his unofficial uniform. These daily rituals are crucial to his multidisciplinary creative practice. “For me, entering the studio is entering my mind,” he said.

The Haitian Canadian artist made his Venice Biennale debut this spring with a major showing in the main exhibition, “In Minor Keys,” which is on view through November 22. Though Mathieu’s practice is wide-ranging, and the themes that attract him—postcolonial history and politics, Haitian identity and spirituality—are ambitious, his work remains grounded in bold use of material. The Veil (2025), one of the paintings showing at Venice, is marked by furious, thick brushstrokes, reminiscent of portraits by Frank Auerbach, and creased fabric drapes over part of the canvas with singed gaps that resemble bullet holes.

Ahead of his first solo exhibition in France—at Paris’s Galerie Poggi in October, alongside a presentation of new work at Art Basel Paris—Mathieu shared the tools he needs to cultivate a space of care and enter the “state of isolation” necessary to make his art.