Haitian-Canadian artist Manuel Mathieu makes his debut at the 61st Venice Biennale with an immersive installation titled *Pendulum* (2025), shown in both the Arsenale and the Giardini. The work expands from a 2023 short film that won top prize at FIFA, incorporating a double-sided screen, life-size fabric figures, and a vetiver fragrance sourced from Haiti. The installation explores themes of psychological burden, collective coordination, and the persistence of unspoken cycles, with a woman in white moving through a forest and men manipulating a large sheet around broken dolls. Mathieu was invited by the late curator Koyo Kouoh, whose Biennale theme “In Minor Keys” emphasizes quiet resistance.
Mathieu’s dual-venue presence at the world’s most prestigious art exhibition signals his rising prominence and the breadth of his practice across painting, mosaic, ceramics, film, and olfactory art. The work’s use of scent to bypass analytical thought and directly engage memory and emotion represents a notable innovation in contemporary installation art. By pairing potentially confrontational imagery with a soothing fragrance, Mathieu invites viewers to dwell in uncertainty, reflecting broader conversations about how individuals and societies carry historical and psychological weight.