Sylviane Merchez, the itinerary of a child without vanity

Drawing was his first language, but it turned out to be much more than that. It taught her how to move from mourning to resilience and how, upon defining this boundary, it can be crossed and re-crossed at will, until it becomes an art.

Sylviane Merchez continued to evolve freely ever since. Connecting degrees – archaeology, Egyptology, the Van Der Kelen Institute – and technical training, she accumulated the sediments of an ever-renewed imagination, in which she never finishes digging up. To better reveal its most disturbing aspects, as well as the most deeply human ones. She is by the way the happy mom of four extraordinary and funny boys – Virgile, Orphée, Gulliver and Faust – who inspire her and make her grow daily.

Her paths, like her means to explore them, are numerous but her most precious ally remains her hand. It is through her that she defines spaces and their borders, invisible as much as inevitable, and questions the way in which we interact with them.

Sylviane Merchez pushes her need for freedom to the point of substituting her identity for another. Under the name of Mnestra she works with raw materials and dialogues with Nature through the process of geopolymers. She dares to use multiple forms of expression while taking pleasure in combining different know-how and does not hesitate to try forays into decoration or the creation of furniture. Because only the limits that we set ourselves have the power to prevent life and art from surprising us, again and again.

Francesca Caseri