"My paternal grandmother, Micheline, named Marcelle at birth, was born under the bombardments in Paris in 1943. She spent the first year of her life in an institution before her mother left with her to Switzerland.
Over dinner, my grandmother told me that for years she had been trying to find out who her father was, to no avail. Her intention was to find a photo of him, to project a face onto his. The only information she had was a first and last name: Marcel Bousselaire. So I investigated. First on the Net, then in Parisian institutions. One thing led to another, and the story of this enigmatic Bousselaire began to take shape:
"Madam, by your request in the virtual inventory room recorded on 20 January 2020, you informed the National Archives of your research into your great-grandfather: Marcel Armand Bousselaire, born on 13 October 1901 in Couture-Boussey, executed in Montrouge in 1947 for having been in the Gestapo during the Second World War. Marcel Bousselaire was one of the French auxiliaries of the German Gestapo in the rue des Saussaies in Paris. He was sentenced to death, national degradation and confiscation of his property by a decision of the Seine Court of Justice on 6 March 1947. His appeal was rejected on 28 March 1947 and he was executed on 14 August 1947. The investigation file concerning him and 14 co-defendants is held by the Archives nationales under numbers Z/6/347 and 348, file no.. 3699."
Marcel(le) is characterised by the absence of the father figure; by an idea of waiting, of confinement, of a missing image. Exhibiting this work in Paris would be a great opportunity to reactivate this family past in its rightful place; to exhume a memory that is both individual and national."
