Arabic Tour of Manuel Mathieu: World Discovered Under Other Skies

Join Muriel N. Kahwagi, our new TD Curatorial Fellow, for an Arabic tour of Manuel Mathieu: World Discovered Under Other Skies, curated by Amin Alsaden. This tour will be among many to be led in Arabic throughout the year, in an effort to welcome the region’s Arabic-speaking visitors to AWE.

World Discovered Under Other Skies features a collection of new and past works by Haiti-born artist Manuel Mathieu—including paintings, drawings, and ceramics—shedding light on Haiti’s relationship to the world. His work reflects on our intertwined lives, in which the boundaries between the past and present or the personal and political are often blurred. Sharing recollections that depict everyday scenes, Mathieu also blends into his canvases an interrogation of the complex history of his familial homeland, Haiti. By unearthing the traumas of state violence, he addresses issues that remain as urgent today as they have been throughout Haitian history. His works suggest a distinct understanding of Haiti’s history—a history defined by global currents, which occasionally collide to erupt in frenzied episodes of mass violence. Mathieu, therefore, proposes that the dynamics of the world might manifest themselves in one place, like Haiti.

Muriel N. Kahwagi works across writing, research, and programming. She has held editorial roles at both the Sursock Museum (2015-2021) and the Arab Image Foundation (2021-2022) in Beirut, and since 2022 has been a programmer at the Toronto Arab Film Festival. Her first edited volume, Al Qasid: The real and imagined histories of sung poetry, brings together contributions from scholars, artists, and composers, exploring the politics of archiving sung poetry, and the mediation and transmission of memories and folkloric traditions. This publication, released in November 2022, was supported by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) and Hammana Artist House.