After diving into the aquatic depths of L'eau et les rêves (Mothland) and exploring the mystical reflections of Miroir, N NAO emerges with ‘Corps’, a work that marks a promising turning point in her artistic career. Composed alone and in isolation at the Baie-Saint-Paul convent on a simple 4-track, it heralds the release of her next album, Nouveau Langage, due in January 2025.

Moving away from the gentle, dreamlike folk textures for which she is renowned, N NAO adopts a more minimalist, rhythmic approach here, creating a hypnotic electronic framework inspired by the Strasbourg dance epidemic of 1518. This historical reference is by no means insignificant: influenced by the writings of Silvia Federici on the control of the female body throughout history, the artist transforms this collective dance mania into a metaphor for the liberation of a survivor condemned to silence.

The clip, shot by the artist herself at La Ronde with spy cameras, allows her to echo the intensity of the physical sensations of her childhood, where fear and rapture seem to have intertwined during a vertiginous experience.

Promising to take care of herself (‘Je t'ai montré les blessures sur mes bras / Je t'ai promis de plus jamais faire ça’), Corps is a gentle manifesto that gives voice to these controlled, brutalized and pathologised bodies, where dancing to the point of exhaustion is paradoxically a way of healing oneself.

Photo credit : Elisabeth Roy