Retranchement, 2021

Christelle Yambayisa  

Born in Rwanda on January 12, 1988, Christelle Yambayisa arrived in France in 1996, after fleeing the genocide. It was in 2015, while she was preparing a thesis in strategy and governance, that she was asked to become a model.

His passion for photography began very early and allowed him, in a way, to put words and feelings to his difficult past. This is how, over the years, she used photography as a means of externalizing her traumas.

Her story and certain lived experiences have led her to speak out publicly on certain societal and political subjects, notably the cult of age in modeling, the legal status of models or hatred and racism online. These events also led her to confront the genocide.

Since a very young age, she has documented her life, as a means of creating her own memories. In fact, all the photos from his early childhood were destroyed during the war. His exhibition La Mode, Les Mondes is the first step that the artist takes towards a work of personal memory of the Rwandan genocide. She wants to encourage people who have experienced the same thing as her, to express themselves on the subject in a non-politicized framework and without taking a position.

His photographs are composed of landscapes, portraits, moments of work and life captured with SLRs and hybrids between 2013 and 2022, and equally with film and hybrid shooting until today.

The chosen works come from her first exhibition where Christelle Yambayisa invites the visitor to understand how fashion where she works as a model allowed her to discover the World, Nature and her own nature.