Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien

Multidisciplinary artist Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien’s (1990, France) work creates stories and poetic narratives that draw on a wide range of cultural and mythological influences, evoking a ‘plural identity’. Exploring femininity, motherhood and healing, Manlanbien pays particular attention to practices and beliefs that have historically been questioned, ridiculed, banned and even erased by colonial forces. In her work, the artist cites and incorporates craft traditions, ancient symbology and medicinal plants. In the convent of Sant Cugat, a place where spirits are restored and fortified, she builds an alternative temple of healing and renewal based on ancestral knowledge and natural remedies that she invents and invokes from different realms. In a 12th-century church, she recreates a temple in which water - a symbol of purification, connection, cleansing and renewal - is the central element.