Maya Inès Touam – Belongings
In Belongings, Maya Inès Touam interweaves photography, digital collage and objects from different cultures to create layered contemporary still lifes.
Image: LV et Protéa, 2020 © Maya Inès Touam. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris.
Belongings (Ce qui nous appartient) is the first museum solo exhibition in the Netherlands by French-Algerian artist Maya Inès Touam. Her visually rich tableaux bring together elements from different eras, cultures, art movements and religions.
Touam constructs her compositions from objects that each carry their own history and cultural meaning. She photographs numerous intermediate stages and combines hundreds, sometimes thousands, of studio images into a single digital still life. The works are presented on supports that reference altarpieces, stained-glass windows, North African architecture and Asian folding screens.
Drawing on myths, art history and her French-Algerian background, Touam addresses themes including migration, motherhood, displacement and the relationship between people and nature. The result is imagery in which cultural differences coexist and form new narratives.