Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien defines herself as a ‘storyteller with mediums’ as she works with textile, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and installation. In her works Manlanbien brings together different cultures while merging traditional handicraft with urban industrial processes. Within her installations she tends to create activated spaces fusing a variety of mediums, techniques and materials as a form of a continuous research to understand according to her words ‘creolization and cultural synthesis’. Elaborate textile works are becoming complex maps of plural identities and diverse ecosystems where different stories meet and form new ones. Ephemeral poetic narrations appear in Manlanbien’s delicate works, often with distinct references to intersectionality. Her works compose new topographies around the themes of femininity.
In her work, the artist seeks to juxtapose diverse cultural elements, bringing them together to form new, syncretic pieces with additional layers of meaning. She is interested in the complex relationships between notions of a universal popular culture, everyday life, and traditional handmade construction processes. The artist speaks of her intention to create ephemeral, poetic narrations which are in perpetual renewal, resulting in tangible pieces which both ‘witness’ and ‘trace’ past diverse cultural histories.