Michèle Boulogne
Michèle Boulogne is a textile designer and researcher whose practice explores how identity and cultural memory are shaped through spatial sciences, from cartography to satellite imaging and planetary observation. Drawing from her Caribbean background, she translates distant or abstract phenomena such as volcanic activity, astronomy and physics into tactile narratives. Through weaving, dyeing and digital imaging, her work bridges craft and cosmology, tracing how scientific observation becomes part of collective and material culture.
“Venus Does Not Exist and An Mitan, the Space Between Islands are textile and spatial installations that span from outer space to the Caribbean archipelago. In developing these works, I translated planetary data, climate sensing and inherited memory into tactile compositions through photo-etching and knitted textile. The works mirror one another: one delves into the astronomical study of Venus, while the other reflects on the relationship between two Caribbean islands, Martinique, where I am from, and Dominica, just to the north. Developed in collaboration with my mother, anthropologist Marie-Line Mouriesse Boulogne, An Mitan intertwines childhood memories and human connection, while Venus reaches toward another planetary ecosystem. Shown together, they question how histories of exploration — celestial or terrestrial — reveal shared desires beyond distances.”