Aviva Brooks

Aviva Brooks is an oil and mixed-media American artist who lives and works in Paris.

Inspired by the contrast between American and French cultures, Aviva Brooks explores the interstices. She works on the tension that separates – or unites – the visual and the written, the action and the thought, the energetic immediacy and the distant elegance, the present and the past, childhood and adulthood, American black or white and European shades of grey.

On her way, Aviva Brooks collects artifacts from the passage of time, thus documenting the tipping point where an era becomes the “past” : telephone booths, public benches, Volkswagen "combis", neon signs...

From this double standpoint, her series "I Think I Can" characterizes her exploration and her work as a "bridge" between two worlds. This short sentence sums up the difference between the American and French mindset from childhood, starting with the way it mistakenly translates into French, when taken literally. And again, it is a symbol of the dichotomy between the mind – I think – and the flesh – I can. For this series, she created a large format canvas full of multiple declinations and variations on these four words. This very piece has just been chosen by the Robert Debré Hospital in Paris to be displayed in its pediatric radiology department (Pr Sebag).