Artist Statement

My art practice is rooted in my lived experience - raised in a Huguenot tradition that emphasises hard work, critical thinking and humanity, I thrive on understanding the stories that have made us who we are. Born in the Parisian banlieue and raised in Cameroon, France and Switzerland, I have spent my life searching for my cultural identity. Starting with myself and the encounters around me, I ask: what makes you the person you have become? I'm fascinated by the underlying and powerful emotional stories.

I have been painting since the age of three. My dreams of becoming a sculptor were lost in the reality of life. I became a consultant. But art remained my refuge, where I continued to create in a secret world of my own. The visual arts, which have accompanied me throughout my life, have always been a kind of unconscious, indirect catalyst for my feelings and longings. In times of depression, painting opened up to me for the first time in terms of colours and stories. When I was 55, trapped in my own boundaries, struggling to solve problems that no longer interested me, I finally burst out and became an artist.

As a consultant I have developed an understanding of human interaction and behaviour. I use this knowledge to create multifaceted images that are meant to be universal. My mission is to document the past and the present, to represent emotions and personal stories. Much of my focus is deeply rooted in the realm of the unconscious. The depicted images become a mirror of our innermost desires and emotions.

My passion for the tactile and for storytelling have become powerful motivations for creating artist books. I have always loved books for the intimate experience they offer. Each turn of the page reveals something new. They are tactile and interactive, big or small - they offer a world of endless destinations and possibilities! But I want to push the body and boundaries of the book into new media and materials, inviting altered ways of looking at and describing our personal stories. My art practice has evolved from questioning intimate experiences of life to larger representations of emotion.