LONDON.- Gasworks presents Mémoires des corps [Embodied Memories], the first UK solo exhibition by Paris-based artist Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien. Through textile, drawing, sculpture, video-performance and installation, Marie-Claire’s work explores how ideas of femininity and the cosmos intersect across cultures, generations and materials.
Born in Paris in 1990, Marie-Claire grew up between France, Guadeloupe and Cote d’Ivoire. From a young age she was taught contemporary and traditional manual craft techniques by her mother and grandmother. Adapting these traditions and experiences, as well as her Creole heritage, Marie-Claire’s multidisciplinary practice is infused with the materials and ideas surrounding her. Artworks become complex maps of plural identities, diverse ecosystems in which natural and man-made fabrics, shells, votives, metals and everyday objects appear side-by-side as symbolic recompositions.
For her exhibition at Gasworks, that which follows a residency earlier in 2025, Marie Claire will present an installation comprising elements that that are frequently attributed with spiritual qualities. The centrepiece of the exhibition will be a room sized installation of hanging curtains of carnelian, pink opal, moon stone and amber – all stones traditionally used for soothing and healing. These will be accompanied by a series of detailed new tapestries including representations of female bodies, bees, and reproductive organs. Both the curtains and tapestries will include hand-thrown ceramics inspired by iconography drawn from Marie-Claire’s personal life, heritage and imagination.
Mémoires des corps reflects on the traumas experienced by women from former French colonies and how those traumas echo through generations. Compelled by these histories, Mémoires des corps is imagined as an altar of healing and restoration. It is a place to recover and resist damaging taboos around female sexuality and reproduction; a space for reverential healing, remembering and recharging.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of intimate participatory performances led by Marie-Claire. These events will incorporate poetry, movement and spoken word, with sound generated by various instruments and crystal singing bowls tuned to resonate with the seven chakras of the body.
Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien (b. 1990, Paris) lives and works in Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include: Existences multiples, AKINCI, Amsterdam (2024) ; L'être, l'autre et l'entre, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2023); Ainsi dans le silence, the French Institute, Berlin (2022); and Weaving the Worlds, Orangerie du Sénat, Paris (2021). Her work has also been presented in group exhibitions and biennials including: Cartographies for after the end, Centre Pompidou, Metz;
Beyond these Walls, Amsterdam; Nouveaux Printemps, Toulouse, France (all 2025); Spray and Stitch, Utrecht; Manifesta 15, Barcelona; Ivory Coast Pavilion, 60th Venice Biennale; Dakar Biennale (2024); the 24th Biennial of Sydney (all 2024); the 14th Kaunas Biennale (2023); the 13th Rencontres de Bamako (2022); La Verrière Hermès, Belgium (2022); MO.CA., Brescia (2019); and the 38th EVA International, Ireland (2018). She is a laureate of the Prix 1% Marchéde l’art and was nominated for the 2024 Future Generation Art Prize.
