Maëlis Bekkouche creates jewelry pieces to capture the ocean’s changing currents, fluidity, and adaptability.
Maëlis Bekkouche is a French-Algerian multidisciplinary artist, contemporary jeweler, and self-proclaimed ‘hybrid creature’ between human and fish and is based in the southwest coast of France. At the center of her work lies a belief that humans are carved by our childhood environments and that the sea sculpted her. “As a kid, I fell in love instantly with the waves, with the colors, the movements, and the taste of salt water. There, I found a home, a shelter, a family, a lover, unconditional love,” she explains in an email interview with Mission.
Her work explores her relationship with the ocean, water, and the fish that inhabit it. She expresses herself through different fields, one being her sculptural jewelry. She refers to her handcrafted wearable sculptures as ‘creatures’ made from recycled sterling silver and sometimes brass or bronze. Bekkouche speaks of her ‘creatures’ as if they were alive in some way. All the pieces she makes are a unique form of self-expression, “I swim between different styles that define who I am and what my universe is.” She also informs wearers that the ‘creatures’ come alive when submerged in water. Inspired by spending practically her whole life by the ocean, she uses these pieces as a way to capture its changing currents, fluidity, and adaptability.
Another outlet through which Bekkouche expresses her love for the ocean is through her performance art self-portraiture—captured in an experimental short film with Director Saskia Scorselo, Bekkouche transforms and rebirths herself into a ‘hybrid creature,’ half-human and half fish. This process, also performed in front of an audience at Le Château de La Haute Borde during an art residency, consists of Bekkouche covering her whole body’s skin with recycled fish to create a ‘second life’ in a sustainable way. She uses this performance to express her love for the ocean’s inhabitants, to bring about change, and condemn the exploitation of the sea.
She shares how adorning herself with recycled fish skins allows her to become her true self, “to die and be born again, to transform and to feel the void between the cycles of death and rebirth. New cycles, new lives, new beginnings, and endings. Through their skins, bones, and scales, I can acknowledge them and give thanks to them.”
Her work with this unique material began during her textile design studies in an applied art school in Paris. Since then, she has also used a surfboard as a canvas in collaboration with UWL in 2019. Shaped by Renaud Cardinal, Fishboard is entirely covered by salmon skins collected from local supermarkets.
Since then, she has continued the ancient practice of utilizing a fish’s skin, scales, and bones to further her artistic expression. She hopes that through her art, she can bring others back to their true self, “I hope that it can open portals in others. I will let them feel and understand whatever they want. I would hope they would see water and any bodies of water in a different way after seeing my work.”
Images courtesy of Maëlis Bekkouche
