Residency reflection / Material process

La Chapelle Saint-Antoine provided a period of concentrated studio work followed by an open-studio presentation. Working between a new setting and memories carried from Accra sharpened questions about how identity, environmental histories and collective memory move across contexts.

The sea, whitewashed architecture and pace of Naxos offered a quiet counterpoint to the density of the source material. These surroundings entered the work indirectly through rhythm, atmosphere and attention rather than through literal depictions of landscape.

Shredded plastic was integrated directly into painted surfaces during the residency. The material retained traces of use and waste while building physical layers around the figures, connecting the act of making to wider questions of consumption, transformation and the environments people inherit.

The open studio extended the work into public encounter. Responses to the group portraits brought forward the tension between individual expression and collective presence—a relationship held through repetition, proximity and variation between figures.