Blues de Trypan (2026)

Blues de Trypan is a video work created in April, 2026 during an artist residency at the Laboratoire de Recherche ‘Dans les Parages’ in La Zouze, Marseille. The focus of this project is a (r)(d)econstruction of the colonial measures implemented in African countries at the beginning of the 20th century to combat sleeping sickness -a disease caused by the parasite Trypanosoma brucei and transmitted to humans by tsetse flies. Infected patients show disturbed sleep patterns, falling in a somnolence state in the final stage of the disease.

Using microscopic videos of the parasite itself, colonial archive material and live footage filmed  in Marseille—a harbor city that played a key role during the colonial era— this work uses the colour blue as a leitmotiv to explore the various elements associated with the disease: dreams, sleep and waking, colonization, tsetse flies, parasites and the dyes used during the colonial era to treat patients with sleeping sickness in the concentration camps of the German colonies.