In the Sweet bouquet series, I paint large bouquets where the flowers are replaced by cakes from different countries. The cakes thus painted, symbolize the different cultures that are found over time in large cities. Food is essential to feel at home. Newcomers bring their culinary traditions with them and hope to find the ingredients in their adopted country that will allow them to recreate the flavors they love. As they search for these, they discover new ingredients.
A bouquet of flowers has long been the symbol of friendship or love. An arrangement of flowers is also a very classic pictorial theme, it’s a still life. In mixing them with cakes from other countries, I hope to breathe new life into a still image, to infuse it with the lives and cultures of people with different backgrounds. We live in a time of nationalism and suspicious glances on the foreigners but art keeps on teaching us that human beings can be stronger than this fear. In my paintings, the bouquet becomes a symbol of openness, love and friendship. They welcome the newcomers and create a connection between people, time and space.
All my work is motivated by my desire to recycle materials from everyday life, in order to avoid participating in the pollution created by consumption and to help halt global warming. The backgrounds of my paintings are therefore made of layers of recycled materials such as vegetables’ mesh bags or bubble wrap and other hard to recycle waste, painted over with acrylic paint. These textures are like colorful strata symbolizing our consumer society.
