Originally from Benin, Melinda Fourn grew up in France and studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. Following a university exchange to Ghana, with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, she chose to settle in West Africa, between Senegal and Ghana. From sculpture, photography and poetic writing to multimedia installations, her work focuses on West African craft skills such as weaving, braiding, ceramics, jewelry and metalwork. By documenting ancestral manufacturing techniques in various workshops, she puts herself to the test of learning from craftsmen, reacting in her own way against the risk of disappearance of a heritage threatened by industrialization and the massive import of products. This craft heritage is deeply rooted in the social and urban fabric that interests the artist.  

From an oversized metal teapot to a ceramic stove adorned with pearls, Mélinda Fourn translates essential everyday utensils into new materials, which she stages at different scales, in order to divert, decorate and magnify them. Some of her sculptures incorporate digital elements, highlighting the tension between technological gadgets subject to programmed obsolescence, and ancient practices. Through these sculptures, Mélinda Fourn highlights the duality between traditional craftsmanship and modern technology. 

Addressing issues of inheritance, transmission and the body in society, jewelry, as a synthesis of sculpture and ornament, plays an important role in the artist's work. Between domestic objects and those considered sacred or having a specific function during ceremonies, she questions the place they occupy within a society. Oscillating between homage to tradition and emancipation, she invests this floating space in which objects exist: between the material and transcendental worlds, the domestic and the public, the intimate bodily and the sacred spiritual.