Myriam Mihindou – Ilimb, L’essence des pleurs exhibition

Ilimb, l’essence des pleurs (English: Ilimb, the Essence of Tears) is the title of a solo show by multidisciplinary artist Myriam Mihindou. Born in 1964 in Libreville to a Gabonese father and a French mother, Mihindou came to France in the late 1980s and lives and works in Paris. The exhibition is shown at the Musée du Quai Branly, which is dedicated to indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas:

[…] Mihindou presents an original installation celebrating Punu culture through the museum’s collections of musical instruments and sound archives. By working with ceramics, assembling objects, sculptures, shapes, materials and sounds and the resulting interactions with visitors, she offers a work that allows us to see, hear and feel her relationship with her culture.

Myriam Mihindou pays tribute to the Punu mourners, of whom she herself is one, true companions of souls who guide the deceased to the afterlife and the living through their mourning. She reinterprets an ancestral practice and the narratives and myths that accompany it. Through her multi-faceted, “total, performative, organic and corporeal” work, as she likes to call it, she highlights the cathartic virtue of these women’s songs and tears on the social and individual body.

The visual communication was designed by j6, a collaboration of art directors Julie Richard and Guénola Six. The exhibition poster and the visitor’s guides depict Pierre angulaire, an artwork made in 2023 using tracing paper, graphite, and silk (courtesy of the artist and Galerie Maïa Muller, photo by Pauline Guyon). While the title is placed on top of the art, Mihindou’s name is embedded – or woven – into it, with some of the many fine lines running over the letterforms. The typeface is PVC Menu, designed by Hélène Marian and available from Production Type.

If you want to see the show, you have a couple more weeks: it’s on view until November 10, 2024.