Presentation

Naomi Lulendo (b. 1994, France) is a French-Guadeloupean-Congolese artist based in Dakar, Senegal. Of multicultural origin, the artist traveled between the Caribbean and France throughout her childhood. Using photography, ceramics, installation and video, her work employs the concept of “détournement” of words, meanings, objects and identity. She inventories images and symbols from various geographical spaces - from fashion imagery, kitsch decoration, interior spaces, architectural motifs, to botanical motifs - to understand how they relate to a given territory, imagined or fantasized, often considered “exotic”. Using the principle of play as a visual strategy to explore constructions of identity, some of his site-specific works explore the relationship to the body and memory, through intimate objects such as combs, pantyhose and mirrors. Her puzzle pieces are made up of images taken from fashion magazines or distorted self-portraits taken on variously patterned fabrics. There's always just one piece missing. Interested in cosmologies, particularly voodoo cosmology, she draws on the language, tales and aesthetics of her Creole and African origins.