Notre Dame

Initiated in 2018, Notre-Dame is an indisciplinary project that uses photography, video, spoken word, sculpture and performance art to create an autobiographical storytelling re-presenting what the artist calls “burning the inner cathedral built inside of me”. Taking place during the period when the Notre Dame cathedral went in flames and after an experience of lynching on the streets, the artist used journalistic content and pop culture elements that normalize the dehumanization of certain bodies in public media outlets as a background that uncomfortably displays societal bias when it comes to human rights and reparations, such as the Notre Dames pinnacle.

Around this same period Naya also contracted HIV, and from feeling suffocated with the fact that when it comes to HIV "silence reigns", the artist chose to speak through non verbal languages. Performing with a hyperrealistic anatomic human heart made of sugar, she portrays that acting vulnerable while being aware of history feels like carrying a bomb among western people. She will break your heart, "her heart" and make you laugh with jokes as sharp as it’s pieces.

“You can’t carry a weight that doesn't belong to you”, the project also comes from a process of auto therapy and giving back to the world a trauma that does not belong to her.