Who are you Alexanor?​​​​​​​​​​​

 

I am a Parisian girl living and working in London and frequently travelling in Asia.I have also stayed some years in Hong Kong. I like large international cities and I love Hong Kong for its dynamism and its multicultural atmosphere.Alexanor is my artist name. I have picked up this name because it’s the one of a beautiful butterfly of southern France and because I have been moved by Zhuangzi’s “Butterfly Dream”.  Zhuangzi sleeps and dreams he is a butterfly. Waking up he asks himself if he is Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi!I am also fascinated by technological innovation because it allows exploring entirely new modes of expression. Very early I have been involved in the setting up of interactive installations such as “Fiat Lux!” an immersive space when could generate colors and sounds just by moving and touching. Then I designed myself other installations like “Expansion” that has been selected and exhibited in the digital art festival “Futur en Seine” in Paris in 2011. Since then I kept exploring and creating artworks 

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What are your concerns?

 

​​​​​​​​​​​I am still looking for deepening and extending my command of design and of new technologies through multiple experimentations and trying out. Today, I have the feeling to go beyond the field of Digital Art and to move closer to the grounds of Contemporary Art.In other words, I am now focusing more on the strength of the message, on its content and on the way it is expressed than on technological innovation per se. As new technologies become cheaper and easier to use, I don’t hesitate to use well spread interactive devices to create artworks that should be striking by their sheer communicative power.Otherwise, within the framework of my non-artistic activities, I keep a watch about major today changes that will shape the world of tomorrow. Observing trends and practicing foresight are feeding my artistic sensitivity; and conversely this sensitivity allows me to detect weak signals that classical analysis would leave aside (the early warning capacity of artists!).

Today I am particularly concerned about the "collapse of the living" hence biodiversity and the genomic revolution are great influences for my creations such as "Empty Sea!" and "Butterflies & their Wings".

 

What does your position as a global citizen bring to you?​​​​​​​​​​​

 

A lot of personal fulfillment. It is fascinating to face different ambiances, colors, sounds, sensations in everyday life. It is also exciting to have to adapt oneself to behaviors, to ways of thinking others than the one you have been accustomed to live in. It is enthralling to put yourself in the shoes of another culture to better solve the problems you are confronted with. I am also fascinated by the differences between the major cultural tectonic plates Asia / West for example, and also by the important variations I can perceive within each of these large entities, between England and France, and between China and Japan for example.Anyway, Asian cultures have become for me a major source of inspiration.

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What are the themes of your current artworks?​​​​​​​​​​​

 

What I am aiming at is to express the rooting of an artwork in a culture and meanwhile to avoid to lock it up in this specific culture. I want to create things and installations having a universal resonance that can be felt and appreciated all over the world.So, the themes I play with are those that involve the future of the whole humankind: the survival of our planet and of our oceans in particular; the way we are changing the society by being now able to communicate and exchange with people at the other end of the world and well beyond our usual common identities, and so on…The curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist has stressed the major role artists may play in society.

He declared himself: “I want to be helpful”.This is also my wish!