Haiti is represented at the 61st Venice Biennale, the world's oldest international art exhibition, by “Yelena's Garden,” an installation by Haitian artist Enock Placide, on view at the Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello in Venice through November 22.

Placide was born in Gonaïves in 1947. A polio survivor since the age of four, he earned degrees in physics and abstract mathematics, worked as a clinical laboratory scientist and has painted for more than 40 years alongside his career.

The mixed-media work arranges canvases, a double-sided panel, a glass sphere and a video in an open hexagon. Rectangular canvases show the phases of a sunset, while round ones evoke cosmic phenomena. A video inspired by the physics of loop quantum gravity introduces a non-linear sense of time, and the glass sphere bends the viewer's perception of space.

Curated by Mario Savini and commissioned by Gandy Thomas, Haiti's ambassador to Italy, the installation explores perception, time and the link between everyday experience and the vastness of the cosmos.

For a country whose art is celebrated around the world, the Biennale offers a stage to show that Haitian creativity reaches far beyond the familiar images of naïve painting.