Hello Lena and welcome to NotRandomArt. The current issue is revolving around the problem of communication and identity. Is there any particular way you would describe your identity as an artist but also as a human being in dynamically changing, unstable times? In particular, does your cultural substratum/identity form your aesthetics?
First of all, I thank you for this interview and the publication of photos of my work. Some of my installations address contemporary issues. In the work entitled, To follow or to unfollow ?, I evoke the use of social networks in their anxiety problematic. It features a bird feeder that resembles a cage full of tags, with sitting, hanging human beings waiting for a look. The piece called Blank Ribbons addresses the frenetic consumption in which our corporate models are pushing us. It is made from blank paper rolls for cash receipts on which the visitor could write and take with him part of this ephemeral creation, in an interactive and participative approach in the de-construction ... a bit like the world goes today. Exile is also envisaged with Jërëjëf Mama! (Thanks Mom, in Wolof language); this African woman placed in an arch looks towards the horizon, observes the world, the future, just before taking the first step. But these are not the main fields of exploration of my artistic work. Like every individual, my identity is plural and is particularly related to minorities. I was born in Dakar, Senegal and my childhood is African, from Madagascar to Congo. From my Corsican family and cultural heritage, from my French culture, from my curiosity, from my travels, from my encounters, I can not precisely distinguish which sections formed my aesthetic inclinations. I live today on an island of the Mediterranean, Corsica, and the light that is there allows me many approaches. There is not particularly geographical or historical inking in my recent creations. They could be done anywhere in the world. They appear to me as feminine, however, in a certain aesthetic roundness. They are more emotion, emotions, a humanist sensibility.
Would you like to tell us something about your artistic as well as life background? What inspired you to be in this artistic point in your life when you are now?
I was a lively little girl, who always had her hands busy. To draw, to paint, to model, to tinker, to photograph. Which I think, suited my family well. During that time, I wasn’t making any nonsense. The only moments when I felt free were those, during the realization of the creation. This is still the case today. And then reading and writing took a more important place. So, I studied Literature and the Arts at Denis Diderot University in Paris. I had the chance to meet exceptional teachers there. The philosopher Benny Levy, secretary of Jean Paul Sartre, the writer Julia Kristeva and the philosopher, psychoanalyst and art critic Roger Dadoun, who brought me a lot.
We have worked together on Marcel Duchamps and utopian authors such as Ievgueni Ziamatine or Charles Peguy. He directed my Master's thesis on the relationship between childhood and fantasy, in Stephen King's novel, It. My artistic work is related to childhood in the playful approach of my experiments and fantastic or surrealistic aesthetics At the same time, I worked as a lighting designer in theaters where I learned on the job, to manipulate the light source. What inspires me today in the process of creation, what pushes me, because they are impulses that generate ideas, images in my mind, is precisely the desire to show, in its lightness, the movement of momentum, growth, flight. My bright photos are made at high speed during a very physical and spirited performance that captures the image of a movement that the source object does not always produce, because it can be motionless while I move while taking pictures, with frenzy , as with the yellow marbles in Honey moon. The object sometimes moves with me, as in a dance; what the Swirls of light series shows. I hold it with one hand and my smartphone with another. It may be perilous. The flight in its emergence fascinates me.It is, with each performance, an attempt of liberation in the movement, in an effervescence, an ardor with which I seek to take again space and time in an action in becoming. In this sense, my works are attempts to escape.
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about your identity as a participant of the visual culture?
My influences are multiple. Nothing is compartmentalized, I am very curious and eager for knowledge. René Magritte comes to mind right away. For the poetic super-reality of his look, for the clouds, for the humor, for the profusion of ideas. I am also thinking of Hubert Duprat, a contemporary French artist in his experimental approach to art, and the question of re-employment or counter-employment, particularly his remarkable work with trichopterous larvae who manufacture sheaths with gold and precious stones chips; fascinating pieces of goldsmithing. He works on unexpected diversions. That's what I like in Art, to be surprised. Authors and artists of the nineteenth century also count, Victor Hugo, Beaudelaire, Rimbaud, symbolism, Delacroix, Courbet, Poe.… My favorite writers like Patrick Modiano, Emil Cioran, Samuel Beckett, Boris Vian, Milan Kundera, Molière, Roland Barthes, Salman Rushdie, Francis Ponge, Henry Michaux, Georges Perec, the Oulipo … And then pop culture, rock music and culture, science fiction, fantasy, Georges Méliès, cinema, cinemas, Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch, Claire Denis, Takeshi Kitano, Robert Altman, Charlie Chaplin, Tim Burton, David Bowie, Oulipo, Roland Topor, Calvo, Roy Rauschenberg, Nils Udo, Louise Bourgeois, John Lennon ….
This is a Prévert inventory. Not exhaustive.