After several years of absence, Cindy Choisy, aka CinLAB, is coming back on the front row with an exhibition entitled «Reboot», whose opening will take place on February 17th at Norma's Art Studio. A multimedia project forged by her interest in Caribbean cultures, her questioning about raw materials and her reflection on climate challenges.
It is by discovering the place where Cindy Choisy has grown up and lives today that you understand how her creative potential had all the freedom to develop. On the heights of French Quarter, the St-Martin family’s property extends in a green and quiet setting that welcomes dozens of birds, turtles, cats and dogs. “I grew up in the woods,” Cindy Choisy summed up laughing.
Born in an environment focused on nature and culture, she still followed the pattern of her parents, both teachers, by pursuing biology studies in Paris. After several years insisting on taking art classes, Cindyfinally put math and physics aside to join the Institut Supérieur des Arts Appliqués (LISAA) where she followed a course in fashion and textile design. After graduating, she did freelance missions back-to-back: small hand for catwalks, graphic or fashion accessories designer for a Japanese designer.
BACK TO BASICS
After 10 years spent in Paris in a fascinating environment but that did not fully correspond to her, Cindy began to feel homesick. “I returned to St-Martin in 2008. My parents had a villa for rent and I decided to take care of the interior design. As I couldn’t find valuable paintings at a reasonable price that I liked, I started making some myself.” This is how her artistic practice began, influenced by her passion for Native American history and culture, that Cindy had the opportunity to discover at a younger age thanks to her parents who were members of an archaeological organization. The painting and the embroidery, which allowed her to nourish her taste for textures, patterns and colors, were then her favorite media. In her paintings, she is questioning the Caribbean identity by drawing parallels with cellular biology and botany. The common thread of her works: a system of rhizomes halfway between biological schemes and electronic circuits.
In parallel, the young woman worked as an art instructor and a professor. She also volunteered her time to lead workshops for children within the Saint-Martin Art School organization with history enthusiast Christophe Henocq. But in 2020, after the Covid crisis, she realized that she really wished to create and develop her career as an artist. “I did want to motivate new artists, but if I had to disappear, it made no sense,” she noted. She decided to put an end to her various activities to focus on her artistic practice, supported by her parents with whom she lives together with her partner and her son. A privilege that Cindy is aware of and that allowed her to continue a project born in 2017. “After hurricane Irma, I realized how isolated and dependent on the outside we were in order to survive,” she said. “There was a lot of sorting to do and I started doing material recovery. That’s how my artistic reflection on climate change was born.”
A COLOSSAL AND COMMITTED PROJECT
On Saturday, February 17th, at Norma's Art Studio in Terres Basses, Cindy Choisy will present her project entitled “Reboot - Futuristic Artefacts”, result of six years of work. The artist imagined “a new tribe of which we would be the ancestors” after the damage caused by global warming. Fruit of intensive research, this fictional Caribbean culture, with its rites, mythology and ancestral knowledge, is questioning the transmission of elements of a culture after its disappearance. The exhibition will include a combination of paintings, objects and installations, mixing painting, embroidery, recycled paper and recycled materials in the continuity of the artist’s questioning on raw material. With this colossal and committed project, Cindy Choisy is marking her blazing comeback to the artistic scene of St-Martin, and we wish her every success.
Instagram : @cinlab_art
