NouN
NouN( b. 1987, Paris, France) is a visual artist born in Clichy, a banlieue of Paris, who lives and works in French Guiana and Paris. In 2022 she and the artist T2i created Manman Dilo, a multidisciplinary exhibition shown in French Guiana, Paris, and several cities in Brazil. The artists’ starting point was the place name“ Guiana,” which according to Indigenous tradition means“ Land of abundant water” in the Arawak and Wayana languages. Together they created a collective imaginary and iconography to be presented in a public space that centered on a mythical creature from French Guiana: Manman Dilo,“ Mother of Waters” or Mami Wata, half woman and half fish, a figure both feared and admired. With Manman Dilo the artists offer a group of works that investigate this figure as a privileged guarantor of history and the ancestral oralities of African descent, as well as a strong feminine power. Today, NouN continues to work on questions of body representation, the decolonized female gaze, and multiple identities.
Mère des Eaux( Mother of Waters)( 2022) is part of a series of dystopian photographs that addresses the effects of climate change, as rising temperatures and the acidification of oceans and rivers threaten the lives of fish and other underwater organisms. The photograph shows Manman Dilo on the beach with her signature comb and accompanied by jellyfish— that strange animal from the seabed and the depths of time. Here the jellyfish is a symbol of immortality and the sacred feminine.
( NouN and T2i)
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