Guyanna (2008) Painting by Rosiane Priam

THIS COULD START ...

This could begin: "Once upon a time there was..." Because, as in all fairy stories a fairy godmother looked into my cradle this Sunday 4 June 1961. She has always been there, she took me with her to the theatre, the circus or the tea rooms ... She made a wardrobe worthy of a princess for my doll. The marvel of her talent as a storyteller! When she told the story of «Beauty and the Beast», she put so much magic into it that I will never tire of listening. Like her younger sister, she loved the opera and operetta. They took my sister and I to see "La Belle Hélène", "The bells Corneville", "Faust" ... I remember the Crimson seats, the fine balconies, the orchestra tuning its' instruments while the audience settled ... Then the heavy red curtain rose on a country setting, the silence punctuated by a scraping of the throat and the music, song and pageantry of the costumes! Our aunts whispered the story because we did not understand much but the spell was already there. The show is a little something that I keep of my childhood memories. In his youth, my grandfather had worked in a circus. He was the clown "Gégé", the "Augustus" the one who annoyed his friend the " white clown ". He participated in all the carnivals in his town. I did not know his wife, my paternal grandmother, but I know she painted a little and playing the mandolin. My maternal grandfather was accordionist in his spare time, my uncles, too, while my grandmother sang with or without her daughters.
Another memorable event, we were the football family. Memories of when my uncles, aunts, friends, brothers and sisters and I, sat on the bleachers of the stadium, shaking until the final whistle for the colours of the club. Tomorrow we each repeat the match as we saw it!
And then there were all these foreign countries who lived in our imagination. My father, a career marine, had sailed fourteen years before returning finally to port. We knew he had travelled the world, twice on "Jeanne" a mythical boat of the French navy. He had also been to Indochina. But he did not speak about that. He preferred to refer to Papeete, Bora Bora and Japan. These ones were countries which held the nostalgia.
At home there was a picture of "Jeanne" leaving the islands, which was welcomed by young and beautiful vahinés. My older brothers imitated the father and embarked on the seas too. At each port of call, we were looked on the globe to find the countries where they had docked. We regularly got pretty postcards in fine coloured stamps.
Names were magic in our ears: Cape Town, Diego Suarez, Djibouti, Dakar, Les Marquises ... The most intense moment was when we went to meet them from the station and when they appeared in the bottom of the stairs, theirs eyes filled with sea air. The other time, when the big trunk arrived a few days after that and we knew it was filled with gifts: dolls, shawls, shells, souvenirs from these distant lands!
As soon as I learned to read and...

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1961
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary French Artists