Yana Nafysa Dombrowsky-M’Baye
Yana Nafysa Dombrowsky-M’Baye is a multidisciplinary researcher and educator from Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. Yana’s matrilineal ancestry harkens to Sénégal and France, and her patrilineal lineage is of Polish/Czech descent. Across moving image, site-specific installation, and the fabrication of talismanic objects, Yana’s practice is a poetic inquiry into the material and immaterial conditions of belonging. Through iterative and ritualistic processes, Yana speculates upon art practice as a form of archaeology, working through mnemonic, fragmentary and erased materialisations of intercultural identities in sites marked by colonial history and personal heritage.
At present, Yana is at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, participating as one of five internationally-selected artists in the program Post-Diplôme (Postgraduate Program), which will conclude in mid-2025.
Yana Nafysa Dombrowsky-M’Baye on CIRCUIT · 2 works
saint louis saint louis (2024)
saint louis saint louis traces the islands of Saint Louis in Paris and Saint Louis in Sénégal through the complexities of a certain aspect of French/Senegalese identity.
seuteu (2023)
Filmed across Tournon-sur-Rhône, Aix-en-Provence, and Dakar, seuteu unravels an archaeology of Yana Dombrowsky-M’Baye’s matrilineal ancestry. Carried by the air, we drift in and over homes, bodies of water, landscapes, and atmospheres, contemplating the space between memory and lived experience.