Amélie Caritey (1998, Côte d’Ivoire), a graduate of the École européenne d’art de Bretagne – Rennes campus, took part in the Residence Workshops offered by Passerelle and Documents d’Artistes Bretagne. Shortly before her residence at the art centre, she spent two months in Côte d’Ivoire, the country she left at the age of three. This second journey to the land of her birth, the first having taken place in 2019, enabled her to bring back a large number of photographs, like so much evidence of the country of her origins. Aware of being on the margins, yet still feeling linked to that nation’s story, the exhibition ‘Bonne arrivée chérie coco’ [Welcome darling coco] is a poetic expression of the artist’s view of a country she as yet knows very little about. The exhibition therefore offers a glimpse of the beginnings of a dual culture under construction, as well as the quest for a bi-national identity.

Defining herself as ‘Afropean’, with one European parent and one African, but having been brought up in a European cultural environment, Amélie Caritey recounts her journey as a “search for a home”. Her photographs often show living spaces, or what is between them such as doors, entrances and windows. These elements express an ambivalence, reflecting the feelings of the artist in that place: invitations to enter the intimacy of people’s homes or perhaps obstacles in the way.

Architecture, motifs and colours particularly captivated the artist and they appear in abundance in the exhibition. Amélie Caritey trained in design and has observed very carefully what makes up the environment of the towns and villages she has visited all over the world, compiling her observations into a visual repertoire from which she takes her inspiration. The patterns of the moucharabieh, those pierced partitions providing natural or forced ventilation, have become a leitmotiv in her research. Their forms transform and combine with those of Ivorian pottery in the vases produced by the artist for the exhibition. By also re-interpreting the forms of this traditional Ivorian craft, Amélie Caritey states that she belongs to the country and expresses her wish to sign up to this cultural heritage.

The title of the exhibition, ‘Bonne arrivée chérie coco’, comes from the words of a woman the artist met in an Abidjan market on her first trip. These words therefore become the symbol of the beginning of a new story: Amélie Caritey is now welcome in this country she only previously knew through family anecdotes.