LA FILLE DE LA VILLE D’YS
The sky and the sea began to tremble... Ys lies dormant off the coast of Douarnenez.
Inspired by the legend of the city of Ys, a Breton city swallowed by the ocean, this project
explores the connections between maritime myths and religious beliefs. It creates a
hybrid world between water and femininity, the sacred and the organic, where
evanescent figures, seemingly floating between two realms, serve as guiding threads.
Through cyanotypes created during the winter of 2024, I revisit this legend by blending
faces with material, dreams with reality, memory with transformation. Feminine portraits
merge with the textures and patterns of the sea. The overlays and blue tones of the
cyanotypes evoke the shifting reflections of the ocean and the storms, anchoring the
images in a timeless and sacred dimension.
This work offers a personal and sensitive interpretation of the Ys legend, straddling the
boundary between the uncanny and the sacred. It examines the traces myths leave in
our collective imagination while celebrating the mysterious and multifaceted strength of
femininity. It is an invitation to dive into the depths, to hear the whispers of a vanished city
and the women who still haunt it.
This series highlights the struggle against paternalism, a recurring theme throughout my
artistic practice. The myth of Ys embodies a metaphor: the story of a cursed princess
torn between her desire for freedom and the oppressive forces of Christian religion and
patriarchy. Through this duality, I question the social and religious constraints imposed
on femininity, while exploring dynamics of resistance and metamorphosis.