Born in 1990, she lives and works in Amsterdam.

A self-taught artist, Mélissa Ruster uses a relief pointillism technique to create abstract symbols. Her meditative artistic practice aims to reconnect her with her family history.

Having grown up in the Île-de-France region, at the crossroads of her Italian, Belgian, and Irish roots, she has always felt disconnected from her Martinican heritage. Each canvas becomes an intimate space, a sacred place where she revisits her ancestry to better embrace it and reconcile the fragments of her history. Moreover, the artist feels guided at every moment of creation, as if she thereby had access to ancestral gestures and motifs.

In 2022, the loss of her grandfather in Martinique intensified this introspective process. This period of mourning marked the beginning of a deeper artistic phase and the birth of her “sacred figures,” a series steeped in memory. Through every stroke applied to the canvas, Mélissa Ruster celebrates life and channels a vital energy connected to her roots.