Olivier Camen

After studying film-making at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinema Francais, Olivier Camen starts his career in the broadcasting world and realising set designs. He then moves to textile decoration, which will be the basis of his art when he becomes full time artist.

In his words, “I work on memory, either individual (La Robe Couleur du Temps) or collective (Memoires, Le Bruit de la Soie). Whatever the subject is, it needs to echo my own story. I have a strong link with images, and this is probably why I always start off with a photograph, usually in black and white. Technically, I enlarge a document and print it on canvas. The change of scale reveal details which were until then invisible to the eye. I start putting colour to the document, and “dream” it.

I begin a process whereby I appropriate it to myself. Then comes the embroidery work, with thread and needle, which is a way to create a new intimate dimension with the image, and to establish a dialogue between past and present. When I was a child, I would spend hours watching my grand mothers embroidering. Time seemed to stand still… To embroider is like drawing, one works with lines. Whatever the subject, I simply try to evoque, intuitively. I try to disappear behind the subject, to let my work touch the viewer.”