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, speculating upon the mnemonic, fragmentory and absent materialisations of intercultural identities in places marked by colonial history and personal heritage. Across a multitude of timescales, genealogical and geographical narratives emerge and dissolve within a practice that explores the soft and hard architectures of the postcolonial.
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.
Through iterative and ritualistic processes, Yana speculates upon art practice as a form of archaeology, speculating upon the mnemonic, fragmentory and absent materialisations of intercultural identities in places marked by colonial history and personal heritage. Across a multitude of timescales, genealogical and geographical narratives emerge and dissolve within a practice that explores the soft and hard architectures of the postcolonial.
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.