Maëlis Bekkouche, French Multidisciplinary Artist, Activist and Ocean Priestess
@maelisbekkouche
Maëlis is a multidisciplinary Artist flowing between ritual art, silver smithing and bio art working with fish skin. Maëlis dances between the realms of the physical and that of the non physical, bringing deep meaning and connection to the element of water, creating her art performances with fish skins and different oceanic debris. Maëlis' work is alluring and somewhat magnetising.
In this interview, I speak with Maëlis about her creative practice and her connection to spirit. She shares with us her process, the seed of her inspirations and allows us in, into the narrative of her life.
Photographer: @bridgetbadore
What is your art practice and who are you as an Artist?
"What I would say is that there are no limits between who I am personally, spiritually, socially, in my inside world and my outside world. There are no limits between who I am and my practices. So I feel like I'm really living in my passions. I also feel like for me, there was never a choice...I'm sure it's a choice, right? But I feel like there is no other choice for me. I cannot 'not' merge all these components of being a woman and being a fish and being a friend and being a lover and being a stranger. It's feels as though I am always merging my practices."
How would you describe your artist practice?
"They are all interconnected but the source of the 'waters' is what I co-create with in general. It’s my primordial purpose on this earth to hydrate the world, hydrate my community with the teachings that I receive and that I will receive from the waters. It started with the ocean for me and now I'm including all the rivers also. I'm living close to the rivers and I feel like the balance of saltwater and freshwater is very important to me, I'm always dancing between the two.
It's all about finding my truest self and becoming myself every day through my art and through my practices. It's really all about the waters healing, waters magic, inspiring others, bringing awareness regarding our relationship with the waters, involving any kind of body of water, which means that it can be us also, as we are mostly composed of water. It's mostly about the water that we have within ourselves and how do you let that water express itself through you every day as an individual. In a more practical and material way, I'm using the matter of life and creative fluids. I'm expressing through this and also dancing with contemporary jewellery. I enjoy creating amulets, earrings and bralettes to adorn the body so the body can feel safe. I also engage within this dialogue between the jewellery and the body that is adorned on. I personally like to question whether this object can be alive...It is.... It has its own life and it's probably going to survive me, it's a whole relationship. My practice is about fluidity and trying to create safety, community reassurance, empowerment, confidence and guidance and support for myself and others."
Can you speak on the process of your fish skin rituals? Do you feel that there is an element of life and death within your work?
"The fish I have felt within me since I was a baby and I've kept nourishing this connection as I have grown older. It's more like the Activist part of me who wants to speak up in a very poetic but slightly political way. I don’t mention any political things even if you look at my instagram page. I'm very subtle about it, it’s just about opening doors in people's minds and soul so they can question again their relationship with water, their relationship with a fish, but also who they are themselves as spirit. It is also to entertain this idea of ‘I am going to eat something and this food that I'm going to swallow in my body has been killed so we can eat it'...my work highlights this thought and illuminates this sacred cycle between life and death. It's about life and death and grief and honouring and gratitude and knowing. I wish to honour the fact that when I'm swallowing what used to be a living being, it's going to create the tissues of my heart... it's such an intimate relationship to eat an animal."
Photographer: @bridgetbadore
"When I look at myself in the mirror I feel like I do not look like myself. Sometimes I don’t understand why I am human! A long time ago, when I started recycling fish skins, I started putting them on my hand and then on my arms and I felt, ‘that's how I should look’. Obviously there is the performance and rituals about the process that is very important to be able to hold space for me to express myself, it is also definitely the ritual of grief as water is the primary element of grief. To be able to invite others to witness that so we can connect and the performances being able to evoke emotions and sensations, the audience is going to feel within themselves. The performances are an invitation to question.
Using the fish skin as an art tool, it's almost like recycling darkness. We are exploiting so many ‘beings’ rights. I ask how do we transcend that and transform that in a more conscious way so at least we can just be closer to the truest of what's around us. For this practice, it's really all about death and life and being the bridge in between. I can be just a bridge and a portal, the container of the 'magic of the fish'. That's why I like to use my body for that, I'm just a tool. I'm always struggling with this thing of being sexualised which I do not want because my body is just a tool and that's it. It's just how I use the tool in order to communicate what I want to communicate. I used to do lots of sand work, (designing art in the sand) and I want to be able to do more stuff like that again in the future, gigantic pieces. It’s also very nice to do this type of art because it is also another way I connect to the body and how you move your body within the space and knowing that you're going to create something that is ephemeral compared to jewellery. I liked the fact I was creating something that I knew in a few hours will be gone and that people were going to walk on it and that it's not about the result. It's more about what's happening within the birth of the creative fluid that I have within me and just about here and now."
What do you feel like are the messages you receive from water that you need to communicate with the people? I’d love for you to speak more about that and more about the ritual. Your work feels very much connected to the liminal space. It's very witchy and magical.
"It's like believing in God, right? It's like, whether you believe in it or not, and especially if you decide to believe in it...for me it feels like I am connecting. I feel like it's really this philosophy that water is not bad or good...it just is. It's not going to come and it's not 'not' going to come. Water will soften the edges of you and it will probably polish you over time if you stay, like the pebble in the river, right? Which is beautiful as well. Recently I have come to understand that there is sickness in the water. The water is so sick but at the same time, so resilient that the water will be fine. It's mostly all about the community of the landscape that is going to be impacted by that. The messages I receive from the water are about the sickness that the water is showing me and also the beauty and the abundance of it. It's overflowing, it's endless.
At the same time, it's the coming back to the cosmos. It's the coming back to the elements in its most purified way. Compared to other elements, water is just so abstract and it can be added to anything. Put it in a bottle, it’s going to take the shape of the bottle, water in a river bank will take the shape of the bank. With that I find comfort expressing this kind of magic, even for myself to heal in order for me to not be so rigid with life in general. I feel like I'm on the path where I'm realising that I can combine the human and the fish instead of being so burdened by the fact that I am a human. My practices bring me home to the earth's magic and the magic that is within myself."
When you spoke of the fish concepts, you said that as a child you felt like that's who you were. Can you speak a bit more about your connection to fish itself?
"I grew up near the ocean, so I was in the ocean alot, When I was in it, I could feel that I was so at home and so welcome. I'm here on earth as well and I feel like I've always struggled finding my identity because I never really knew my father. I had Arabic roots that were very foggy. I have designed my own tattoos that have been inspired by the ocean as well. With my tattoos, I'm always trying to reveal myself and just this thing of showing to others who I am directly as I'm walking in the streets. There is no facade. There is no hiding.
I always dreamt that I could have gills and that I could stay in the ocean. I always dreamt that the ocean is my true love and saw the water as my lover. So I've been dreaming of the ways that I could be a fish and even the dream of birthing fish then I could release them into the ocean. When I went into design school and I did textiles, before I got into jewellery. I got to explore more about recycled materials and that’s where I deepened my relationship, especially around sustainability and animal welfare in the fashion industry. I love fish so much, I like how it’s hard to catch them because they are slimy and because they are flowing all the time. They cannot really bump into something, they will slide around but their flow can’t really be interrupted.
I like the philosophy of the fish about slowing and swimming through and going with the currents. What I also love about them is that they have no leaders. They all know their personal space, nobody is going to come into each other's space. They respect their space and still they swim together."
Esopus River
The way I experience you is that your jewellery making is like you're human part connecting you to the world of this society and your experimental fish skin art pieces are your magic and essence. What opportunities has your different types of Artistry manifested for you in your life in terms of travel or connections with other creators? Is it your main job? Do you have another job?
"Making jewellery, I have to be focused. I have to be grounded, I also have to use my human hands. It's a long and rocky process, which I have had to accept because some experiences are brighter than others when you are self-employed. I have in the past and still enjoy working outside of my artistic freedom. I would work outside in nature but I feel like I don't have the bravery to work in an office. It's always been, I either do my passions and I work on it and I expand with it or I die. It is really black and white. I'm so dedicated as I refuse to betray myself. I respect people so much that work in the places I cannot. I'm very, very privileged, the fact I can have this conversation with you in the middle of the day and I don't have to go to an office. I'm still able to eat every day and I have a roof that people allow me to stay under as I've been a nomad for more than six years. I'm trying to protect my heart and look after my body and my space. During the day my mission is to work on my jewellery in order to sell more. But up until now, I struggled a lot to sell and it was very slow and it's still very slow. I am hoping abundance will come."
Speaking with Maelis was enchanting and inspiring. Her works I had seen online over the course of a year or so and to speak with her via zoom and having the opportunity to ask her these questions was illuminating to the soul and to my spirit. To be able to speak with Artists, hear their stories and musings of their life, their perception of reality and to deepen my understanding of their Artist practice always gives me hope and reminds me that making art is always important, it is essential and it is necessary to do for us to live fulfilling lives.
I want to be walking poetry so people can feel inspired in their lives.
-Maeils Bekkouche
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