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THE LAND CHAPTER 10

Beatrix (Bix) Fife

THE LAND in English
2020.09.10

Now I have become sure that I have to return to my previous countries, the ones where I grew up, at least one of them. I need to go back in time and catch up again with myself.

I attend the art school and work to save some money, while drawing for hours every day.

I try to live according to my own rhythm. Thanks to the drawings, my energy is coming back.

 

The Summer has come. There is a year-end students’ exhibition in the little underground art school (which will later become a big one). I exhibit a painting of a river, orange, red and dark blue. Hidden in it is a big face looking straight forward. The brother of one of my friends likes it and unexpectedly would like to buy it. When he comes to fetch it in my room, it is the day before I will travel back to my old country.

He rings the door bell and I ask him to come in. We have a cup of tea, in front of the painting.

When I tell him that I am going to move to my previous country, and continue to study art there, he tells me that he would like to come to see me there, in a month or so, on his way to the Sahara Desert.

He is going to cross the North African sand dunes.

In the painting, he says, he recognizes something, like a questioning, which he also has in him.

It is maybe this questioning that makes him want to cross the desert, for the third time, and go to Africa.

I move down to a small room in my previous country, and as he had said, he comes to see me, and stays with me for a few weeks. I am so happy to have met him.

 

Drawn between strong feelings, I decide by myself to go with him. I will bring my pencils and paper.

We depart together on the journey to cross the desert, discovering the harshness and the magnificence of nature, on the sand trails and the red earth roads of warmhearted human Africa, an incredible, beautiful and hard trip.

Later on, I continue the journey of life, drawing and playing music, meeting new people in new places.

I still wonder about my roots and my country, but when I draw my feelings, I discover an inner space and time, thus becoming slowly more grounded.

My roots are in my inner Land.

The drawings are small trails and landmarks left behind, not to get lost in the big world.

 

Atelier in Tokyo, Japan  2020

Beatrix (Bix) Fife
Beatrix (Bix) Fife プロフィール

Born in Stockholm, Bix grew up in Rome in a Norwegian, British and Italian family, speaking 3 languages. At the age of 7, her family moved to Paris, where she completed her secondary studies in French schools and also learned to play the classical flute.

While studying at university and management school in Oslo she also started to paint and to do theatre. She was a trainee for 6 months in NYC at the New Dramatists’ studio. She then studied art in Oslo and at the Fine Arts Academy of Budapest. In 1990 she won a prize in an art competition in Austria, giving her the opportunity to come to Japan. In Kyoto, she studied Japanese calligraphy and worked with performance art between 1995 and 1999, with philosopher Michael Lazarin and musician Mamoru Katagiri (Marki) and played music for dance companies in the Kansai area from 1997 to 1999. She moved to Brussels in 1999 continuing to paint, to exhibit works and to give concerts. As well as learning to play jazz at the Music Academy of Brussels, she played in the Bix Medard electropop group and founded the Brussels Language Activities, school of language and culture. She received a Master’s degree in Sciences du Langage at the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon, in 2008.

After moving back to Tokyo in 2010 she started Bix&Marki, a musical duo of original French songs. Bix is a painter, a singer, a musician and a linguist. She sings, plays the flute and writes the lyrics of all the Bix&Marki songs. While working on her music and painting, Bix teaches French at universities, specializing in role-play and language through art and personal expression.