PAINTING THE ART OF ART 80 Pointe d’Esny, in the southeast of the island. You have to be there to measure the intricacy of her work and her life. The three little rooms – including the kitchen – are an extension of her studio, installed most of the time on the patio which opens on to lush vegetation. Her two German shepherds stand guard. There is something untamed about her. Not only her hair, but also her hazel eyes that can be piercing. MULTIPLE IDENTITIES Inside, all the walls are covered with her paintings. The spiders have woven their traps in the room corners. Each of her works is striking, gripping: perhaps because of the omnipresent faces that interrogate us. Those of the Continuumseries started in 2006 – a juxtaposition on a neutral background of photographs of unknown people taken during her travels. That of the artist herself, depicted with hyper-realistic features and armed with the symbols of Shiva in the remarkable, colourful painting Divine Weapons. Disturbing too is the woman with a headdress of wire in the form of a boar’s head – like that of the Hindu goddess Varahi. Or looking at the royal blue triptych covering a whole wall, seemingly about to swallow us up. Each painting has to be deciphered. Here, in a pastoral landscape – borrowed from an engraving by M. J. Milbert which the artist has enriched with myriad details – the silhouettes of slaves and of authoritarian colonialists and their dogs merge into the background. A huge young millennial Mauritian who belongs to all communities hangs on the edge of the painting. It is indeed the human being and all that defines him (his clothing, his ethnic origin, religion, geographic The Initiation (2018). “Each figurative element is a selfportrait. Between the two crocodiles, which transport the goddess of the Ganges: my own head – which is also the severed head of Kali – emerging from the calm waters, and the warlike Varahi, a goddess with the head of a boar, symbol of mother earth.” The Initiation (2018). « Chaque élément figuratif est un autoportrait. Entre les deux crocodiles, véhicule de la déesse du Gange : ma propre tête – qui est aussi la tête coupée de Kali –, émergeant d’une eau calme, et la guerrière Varahi, divinité à tête de sanglier, symbole de la terre mère ».
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