​artist Histoires

Some secrets are too heavy to speak aloud, so they end up buried inside a sketchbook. In the spring of 1938, I arrived in Lyon with empty pockets and the weight of having left Germany behind. Keeping watch over the old Montclair Theatre at night was just a way to keep from starving, until I saw her: barefoot on a darkened stage, wearing a golden mask, moving as if her body weren't enough to scream everything she carried inside. To the rest of the world, she is Eloïse: the spotless daughter of an influential family with an arranged marriage waiting just around the corner. But when the lights go out, she is only Lys. And Lys only exists before my charcoal strokes. We were two strangers pretending to have no past in an empty theatre. But outside, time doesn't stop. Europe is on the verge of burning to pieces, and some stories-no matter how hard they try to erase them-simply linger, waiting inside a chest full of letters no one was ever meant to find.