My work uses history and the past to address the moment we are living in now. The Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen (Porte de Clignancourt) in Paris is a flea market filled with history, for better or worse. Moving through its corridors is an onslaught of information: objects, histories, light, shadow. One scans everything from discarded technology and lawn sculptures to vintage silk scarves and objects taken from Cameroon—reminders of the colonial systems through which France once controlled trade and restricted economic autonomy.
The market becomes a site of transference: of energy, eras, human choices, and the consequences of industrial progress. As visitors search for bargains or objects to repurpose, they also encounter the material residue of historical failures and quiet crimes—toward neighboring countries and within the capitalist systems that encourage us to overlook them.
My aim is to make paintings that feel historical in their approach. Using traditional techniques—wet-on-wet painting, linseed oil over a grayscale ground, and stand oil to avoid a slick varnished finish—the works can initially appear as if they belong to another era. On closer inspection, however, they reveal themselves as contemporary. Their compositions draw from photography and street scenes, and their framing carries the deliberateness of cinema. At the same time, the paintings remain close to the feeling of a study, preserving a sense of immediacy and vitality within an otherwise historical register.