At the crossroads of the quest for my plural identity, of vanished life stories, of a weakened heritage… 'Ancestral' was born.
There are silences that transcend generations.
Suppressed memories, unspoken pain, vanished stories…
But which still resonate in our flesh.
My name is Eugénie Cynthia.
I am from Martinique. French. Woman. Creator.
I sought to understand what constituted my being, what connected me to invisible, fragmented memories.
The feeling of having inherited a fragmented history.
From a time before. From somewhere else. From uprooted roots.
So I searched.
In books, in the stories of the ancients, in my DNA.
I listened to the silences. I turned my gaze towards the fabrics. I observed their symbols.
I learned their story, sometimes with a biased perspective…
I then broadened my research into the arts. Discovered gestures. Marks on bodies. Another approach to beauty.
Colors. Patterns. Another facet of African aesthetics. Authentic, extraordinary, fascinating…
But it is customs, practices, peoples that are disappearing… a memory that is being lost. Again.
This is where everything came together. At the crossroads of the quest for my plural identity, of vanished life stories, of a fragile heritage… 'Ancestral' was born.
A first collection. Five pieces. Five perspectives. Five tributes.
A spotlight on cultural paintings and scarifications. Body aesthetics from tribes in Niger, Kenya, Ethiopia…