MARIE-CLAIRE MESSOUMA MANLANBIEN BIOGRAPHY
Joseph Beuys and Senga Nengudi are feasible forerunners of Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien, as the young French artist of Ivorian and Caribbean descent makes sculptural works which operate as ‘force fields’, and which she also uses in performance. These combine craft skills derived from the matriarchal Akan society in Côte d’Ivoire with traditional European sculptural techniques to arrive at hybrid objects. In Nottingham Contemporary curator Cedric Fauq’s words, Manlanbien ‘investigates and produces forms that belong to a certain concept of feminine blackness’ to produce ‘a language that escapes the coloniser’s gaze and understanding.’