MAT (left) and ZEKKY (right) at the DEKA exhibition – Salle de la Station, Cloître de l'Abbaye Saint-Martin, City of Laon. Photo credit © Romain Berthiot
MAT x ZEKKY : MYTHOLOGY AND Résistance
Since 2016, the duo MAT x ZEKKY has been exploring the tension between order and chaos. Their artistic process stems from an intimate confrontation with illness—specifically ZEKKY’s ankylosing spondylitis—a condition that tends to petrify the body. By drawing from mythology, ancient statuary, and the imagery of Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac), they transform this physical constraint into a monumental narrative and graphic force. Spanning canvases, woodcuts, installations, and urban walls, their works transmute rigidity into an act of poetic resistance.
This drive to break through organic stiffness finds its echo in a broader ambition: to break free from societal shackles. The struggle against the body’s confinement thus evolves into a quest for freedom at the heart of the city.
For MAT x ZEKKY, occupying public space goes beyond mere aesthetic performance: it is an act of reaffirmation. As a female duo united both on stage and in life, they are now reclaiming platforms of expression from which social codes and constructs have long excluded them. Their artistic approach serves as a necessary response to these invisible barriers and the silences imposed by the past. By inhabiting the city with their monumental works, they transform what was once a site of exclusion into a territory of visibility.
​
​
« Their artworks bear the traces of choices, renunciations, and adjustments, like an act of poetic resilience. [...] To create today is to work within uncertainty, to accept vulnerability as a method. What Mat x Zekky present is not a response to collapse, but a way of standing firm within it: by keeping forms, meanings, and possibilities wide open. »
URBAN ARTS Magazine – March–April 2026
« This artistic couple has developed an original, collaborative way of working. In the vein of Surrealist exquisite corpses, one begins and the other responds, resulting in unique works where techniques, materials, and even expressions merge to tell stories through both words and images. Drawing inspiration from sources such as the Louvre journals, they have embarked on a quest reminiscent of mythical heroes » URBAN ARTS Magazine – May 2021
« And from their introspective work sessions, they soon give birth to a story of universal value. The alchemy of creation has taken hold. […] They exchange perspectives, react, and reflect, and this creative "ping-pong" reveals an unexpected truth: they are one! » ALEA JACTA EST, Aurélie Taupin – November 2021.
​
​
MAT x ZEKKY have been in an artistic residency at Fileuse, the City of Reims' art wasteland since January 2019 and were awarded the Prisme Patrons' Club grant that same year. In 2021, the duo was also a finalist for the Pébéo Prize.
​
In 2024, their work was selected for the exhibition WE ARE HEREat the MUSEUM OF LE PETIT PALAIS in Paris, —the first international collective exhibition of urban art, held in partnership with Galerie Itinérrance and Galerie Taglialatella.
​
In 2022, under their leadership, the association
Le Mur de Reims ewas founded, joining the network of "Murs" (The Walls) across France, Belgium, and Luxembourg—an initiative started in 2003 by le Mur Oberkampf.
One Duo: Two Pillars of Strength
Their work rests on a rare balance. MAT (Marjorie Tocqueville), art director and curator of "Le MUR de Reims," is the architect of their visual and scenographic coherence, bringing her mastery of Fine Arts techniques and spatial design. ZEKKY (Maryline Mathevet), trained in semiotics and project management with multiple higher education degrees, infuses their work with a more analytical and narrative structure. From her passion for writing emerged their mythological autofiction, "The Coalition of Invulnerability"—an intimate odyssey that summons, in a single momentum, the full combative, visual, and narrative richness of the duo.