I know and feel that I am water, I am fluid and I can adjust, I am the container of it, of my soul and wisdom. All the teachings and learnings are already wishing me and water reflects all this back at me.
The Call of Ocean | Maëlis Bekkouche
Maëlis Bekkouche is a multidisciplinary artist and contemporary jeweler. Her creative process involves water in all its forms. She is expressing herself through different fields such as sculptural jewelry, the recycling of fish skins / scales and creating land art
She plays and manipulates different materials such as wax, sterling silver, fish skins / scales, bones, textiles and in situ materials like sand.She tells stories about metamorphosis, transformations, passages from one form to another is one….It is moving like water…endless waves…stream…
What does oneness mean to you?
Oneness means learning how my body functions, how it evolves on the Earth, how it moves. From this point, I can go outside and feel the outside so I can merge with it or at least engage harmonious rhythms and cycles. Oneness is to be part of the Earth and especially the oceans for me. There is no difference between me and natural elements but physical, chemical properties.
Oneness is to be aligned and anchored knowing I’m playing an humble but real part in this fragile and precious ecosystem we live on.
How did you come to the realisation of your sacred connection with water?
Unconsciously since my childhood because I grew up near the ocean. It built and sculpted me, still does. Consciously, the key point was when I truly found my practices and way of expressing my inner (artistical) universe. I know and feel that I am water, I am fluid and I can adjust, I am the container of it, of my soul and wisdom. All the teachings and learnings are already wishing me and water reflects all this back at me.
Water heals, water is my home, water regenerates and water makes me grow and expand.
In a practical way, you realise the fantastic powerful and sacred connection with water when you immerse yourself in it. It is coming back to the beginning. It is dying and transforming too. A matter of sacred cycles.
What is magic? Do you believe in mermaids?
Magic is the creative fluid, the creative genius we all incarnate in us. It is creativity it is birth, the birthing of ideas. The birthing of visions. Magic is the stories and the interpretations through the experiences. It is how it feels not necessarily how it looks.
I do believe myths, stories, symbols we truly believe they are real. Just because I persuaded it is all in our minds and spirits. In that sense I do believe in mermaids probably because it is the creature I feel the closest to (probably not in the mythological sense even if it speaks to me deeply). I do believe in symbols and in their powers.
Our earliest ancestors came from water, given the current scenarios of water contamination how can we become sensitive to this part of our being?
First of all, the most important thing is to find time, solitary time. To be alone in nature takes us back to our true nature/self. Then we can initiate change to change the outside world.
Secondly, I think the key to mobilisation starts with the feeling of loving, caring and the feeling of wanting to change something (even if it’s a droplet). You want to change and act on the universe and the world because you feel you are truly part of the ecosystem regardless your status or your societal place. Knowing and acknowledging that without nature and especially water we face the end of ourselves. There’s no systems, thoughts, whatsoever without water.
Lastly, to raise awareness like I try to do is to become a bridge between politics, systems, science, philosophy and social actions for the people to understand and to experience it.
It is an EXPERIENCE.
Maëlis Bekkouche @maelisbekkouche,
Read more about the artist on her website www.maelisbekkouche.com
