The works of French artist Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien weave the materiality of the universe through fragments of belief, history and memory. They sensitively carry us into an environment beyond any known geography, made of symbolic evocations and relationships. Her work is a continuum of attachments and knowledge, the expression through sewing, performance and poetry of a heritage rich in influences, stories of the beings around her and of her Akan and West Indian ancestors, of complex relationships between traditional and contemporary practices.
Her art of assemblage, alive and protective, is a cartography of roots and correlations that intersect and connect. In her sculptures and textile works, presented on the wall or activated in performance, each detail is linked as a sequence of prints, objects inspired by ancestral means of communication and elements of the Akan matriarchal institution of the Ivory Coast and Guadeloupe, stones, threads, hair, silver sponges and writings, woven, engraved or cut into long strips of copper. Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien tells us, through forms, materiality, words and symbols, the story of a world on the borders of the tangible where the natural, the living and the spiritual are one. The central relationships in her work between man, the environment and all the ecosystems that make up the fabric of our world echo contemporary climatic considerations.
