FREE(HOLD)

n:u (melissandre varin) (b. Gonesse, France, 1992) is an atmosphere-maker with a practice rooted in Congolese, Guadeloupean, and Beninese heritages. Building upon (more than) human, cross-border collaborations, they unearth ancestral ceremonies to be with change. They play with unexpected pairings between materials, bodies, and concepts, disrupting colonial binaries and dominant narratives. n:u combines intuitive, embodied-knowledge with a political ecology approach grounded by an MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development from University College of London (UCL).

n:u’s experimental practice unfolds with emotional excavation, ancestrality, and contemporary devotional use of materials such as cotton, soil, fire, salt, rum, hair, water, or molasses. They make performance arts, installations, sculptures, and liberatory infrastructures. This is reflected in their recent performances at Tate Britain, Lọpọ Lọpọ, as well as reparative curatorial initiatives including les ongles noirs dirty nails (Dakar–Birmingham, 2022–24), B.O.O.K (UK, 2020–23), Open Call (online, 2020-23), and PAPAYA (Luxembourg-UK 2019–23).