Namsa Leuba
Namsa Leuba was born to a Guinean mother and an Helvetian father and grew up on the shores of Neuchatel’s lake in Switzerland. In this work, Namsa shows an interest in the construction and deconstruction of the body as well as the depiction of the invisible.
She studied ritual artifacts common to the cosmology of Guineans; statuettes that are part of a ceremonial structure. They are from another world, they are the roots of the living. Thereby seeking to touch the untouchable. Modesty, luck, fecundity or a channel for exorcism, those statuettes hold a cultural value through what they represent or symbolize. She transforms these objects, cosmological symbols of a community, who traditionally have a signification when used as part of rituals and are part of a collective where they must not be separated from, or risk they loosing their value. They are not the gods of this community but their prayers. They are integrated in a rigorous symbolic order, where every component has its place. They are ritual tools that Namsa animated by staging live models and in a way desecrating them by giving them another meaning; an unfamiliar meaning in the Guinean context. In recontextualizing these sacred objects through the lens, she brings them in a framework meant for Western aesthetic choices and taste.
She has done numerous wonderful series and projects and it is always very difficult to choose just one, so pass by her website and check out some of her other (and also more recent) works.
