Artist Statement
At the end of the 1970s, many Caribbean people from Guadeloupe and Martinique arrived in the Paris region to take up low-skilled jobs in public institutions. As the number of arrivals increased, what some have come to call “a third island” gradually took shape: an island diaspora that developed in mainland France and grew to nearly 200,000 people. This is where my identity takes root. This anchoring across multiple sites—both physical and imaginary—and the lack of representation of diasporic histories have led me to reflect on the spaces and imaginaries of contemporary Caribbean life today, both in the overseas territories and in the peripheries and centers of Western colonial empires. These “Black geographies” lie at the heart of my artistic research.
I develop an artistic practice that lies at the intersection of documentary and poetic investigation. Contrary to the typical representations of the Caribbean as deserted beaches and lush exotic nature, my focus is on urban practices and the forms of resistance they generate. Drawing on the idea of associative language — central to the rhizomatic thinking of Caribbean poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant — I explore the complex dimensions of contemporary Caribbeanness. By constructing a poetics of the Black body that puts the complexity of the urban landscape in dialogue with the youth represented within it, my work moves beyond the notions of islands or singular identities to consider sites of encounter, collision, and entanglement.
Through my photographs, I craft a magico-urban aesthetic — a visual and poetic language born from the collision of mystical heritages, postcolonial memory, and globalized urban cultures. By centering the perspective of a generation in search of renewed narratives and new modes of belonging, I explore how young people relate to the visible and invisible layers of the world they inhabit. Details of bodies and objects become artefacts charged with symbolic meaning. The environment—whether concrete or overgrown, abandoned or overflowing—serves as both backdrop and protagonist. In this world inhabited by signs and echoes, youth constructs shifting identities: sometimes painful, always inventive.