Cécile Vernant unfolds her insular world on 150m2 at l' Orangerie du Sénat and received for this exhibition the 2026 grant "Aide à la création de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts - Institut de France".
© Cécile Vernant
Cécile Vernant : "Man Mélé !" , a solo exhibition
Paintings, drawings, photographs and ceramics converse like exquisite corpses or a whole dorica castra. Martinique, a French West Indian island where she grew up, is the very heart of her work.The artist is guided by emotion, gesture, matter, memory, lights and the burning desire to transcribe the immensity of this small geography. No need here for hyperbole and/ or explanatory references: the power of imagination and evocation of childhood sensations are her compass.
The boundary between figuration and abstraction is tenuous, thus allowing a great freedom of interpretation to the viewer and especially the encounter with the Other. Her work is visual but also tactile, working the earth with objects diverted from their functions (volcanic rocks, bolts, sewing equipment, manganese etc.) and this, according to the tropical seasons (dry season, off-season and rainy season).
She also creates bridges with Japan, another insular geography that has many points in common with the Caribbean basin (culture of cyclones and volcanoes, archipelagos, magical realism etc.). She exclusively prints her photographs and/or her "Mutant Prints" on Japanese Art Paper, thus revealing the softness as well as the soul of textured paper.
"Man Mélé!" has several meanings in Creole. For this exhibition, the artist chose "I am bewitched", as the beauty and richness of this island shake and haunt its soil. Island also very rightly nicknamed: the island where we always come back ...
