For her first solo exhibition, "Solo-Show" at the Cécile Fakhoury Gallery in Abidjan, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien tells stories, her own and the one of the living, through polymorphous works, sometimes cartographies or totems, contemporary paths of a mystical and mythological ancestrality.

In the series of new works presented in Abidjan, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien anchors herself in traditional artisanal weaving techniques, based on natural fibers such as silk and cotton kita cloth. Dyed and embroidered, her works carry a knowledge and a strength symbolized by the elements that compose them: shells, scales, drawings on paper.

Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien no longer presents herself solely as a storyteller of poems, an explorer of materials and signs, but as a true healer, through plants and stones, her works representing her power to take care of others, her loved ones, who are present in her woven and mural sculptures in a very figurative way. This healing approach has been inherited from her Ivorian, Guadeloupean and Amerindian ancestry, where the relationship to healing also passes through the living and the organic.

In the midst of familiar symbols in the work of Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien, from Akan mythology, such as the Siamese crocodile symbol of equality between beings, the artist introduces new forms, and dives more deeply into an evocative imagery of a female body in symbiosis with nature and cosmic balance. The artist's works refer to African mythologies such as that of Mami Watta (or Mother of Water in Guadeloupe), through elements of the marine worlds, like organic treasures charged with delivering their powers and mysteries.

Between sophistication and simplicity, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien's works unfold their meanings and invite us to the game of hopscotch, in memory of our childhood, assembling little by little the path that will allow us from earth to reach the sky together. "Embrace life. Let yourself blossom. [...] Dance!"

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