Encounter in Sharee (2021) Naimah Amin

In Encounter in Sharee (2021), Naimah Amin presents us with the sharee - a shared cultural object that links two paintings to one another. The two paintings depict a mother and daughter, for which Amin used old family photographs as visual references. Amin emphasizes the subjectivity of her distinct lens, one that centres imagination, interpretation, and ultimately unique representations. Her works do not necessarily seek to create narratives about identity, despite the use of the personal archive as one point of reference; “I have a fascination with old photographs…but my intent in using them doesn’t necessarily align with nostalgia or longing. I use them as a lens to understand other things.”

Even within spaces of contemporary visual culture, racialized artists are not always given the credit of being able to look beyond themselves or their own cultural identities. The self, already a charged entity that must navigate spaces that are predominantly white, becomes a metaphorical ball and chain of artistic freedom and expression. Artworks made by racialized individuals can sometimes be pigeonholed into shapes that are easily recognizable by the white majority. To subvert these expectations, Amin uses imagination as a means to ground her paintings,

“With imagination, I’m filling in the gaps I have about my parents’ culture and extending their memories. I use it as a tool to signify the hybridity of cultural identity, but also to emphasize how identity is in states of constant evolution and transformation as it lives on in the diaspora.”

In Encounter in Sharee, Amin asserts artistic agency, keeping in mind her conceptual ambitions, which challenge hegemonic narratives of how and what racialized artists are allowed to explore in their works.

“I chose to present these two paintings together because, in my head, they show that memories can be interpreted in different ways. One is a recent memory of my sister, and what you see on the canvas is the impression of a memory I hold close to my heart. Whereas, in the painting of my mother, I allowed myself to deviate from what I saw in the picture. It isn’t based on my memory. The painting is a standin for how oral histories are absorbed by diasporic individuals, and how they live on through us.” ly conceptual, his paintings are driven by a narrative, usually derived or inspired by Haitian history, where intimate memories and feelings are spawned. His mixed-media painting Bennett (2018) (Fig. 1) calls attention to Haiti’s oppressive Duvalier eras, where Mathieu found family members on both sides of two murderous dictatorships. Having painted this work after suffering serious injuries in a car accident, Mathieu’s historical examinations have since taken on embodied implications wherein hereditary traumas and memory incarnate into physical expressions.

What does it mean to search for a feeling — not necessarily an understanding — of one’s identity when rooted amid divergent landscapes? What can this embodiment look like in a state such as Haiti, where identities are pluralistic, complex, and dismissed?

In this visual investigation, we explore Mathieu’s attempts at self-identification through his intimate explorations of uncertainty towards identity and place as expressed in his history-centric work. Using Bennett as a pictorial guide, we delve into the hindering journey of self-discovery and the

by Kari Valmestad / Kioni Sasaki-Picou

Montreal-based artist Manuel Mathieu explores these questions in his expansive hallucinatory paintings that interweave themes of nationhood, diaspora, identity, and trauma. Immigrating from Haiti to Canada at age nineteen to live with his grandmother in Montreal, Quebec, Mathieu has since emerged as a prominent Canadian artist with nine solo shows and over a dozen group exhibitions under his belt. His style is recognizable: drawing from Abstract Expression (taking specific inspiration from Clyfford Still)1 Mathieu’s colourful and formless compositions build up non-descriptive worlds in which ambiguous figures dwell in indistinct and often hidden spaces. Typical- never-ending flux of becoming. Along this examination, Mathieu’s work will be placed into a context of Black Canadian art history, an up-and-coming field that centers Black Canadian artists and artwork historically omitted or devalued in canonical Canadian art history.2

Unlike in most of Mathieu’s works where (if there is a figure) they remain abstractly hidden or disjointed, the figure in Bennett is identifiable. Michèle Bennett on her wedding day to Haitian president (1971-1986)

Jean-Claude Duvalier.

Mathieu reproduces the famed 1980 candid shot of Bennett in her white puffed-sleeved gown and halo-esque hairpiece (Fig. 2). Except in his version, a fluid medley of purple, blue and chartreuse-hued washes mimic her iconic bridal accessory. In an almost fluoroscopic fashion, Mathieu scaffolds Bennett’s head and shoulders with wet bonelike marks while larger areas of colour pool at her face and scalp. Mathieu’s rendition is hauntingly luminescent, both in colour and subject.

The significance behind Michèle Bennett’s photo is multi-layered. The image calls attention to her and Jean-Claude Duvalier’s infamous marriage. Costing approximately 2 million dollars, their union was considered to be Haiti’s “wedding of the century,”3 hyper-publicized and surveyed all around the world. In addition to the wedding’s extravagance, the event garnered incredible media attention due to its sheer political nature. Bennett was the daughter of an influential Haitian family, part of the country’s bi-racial bourgeoisie. Viewed as immoral, anti-traditionalists and in opposition to the