Issue 4 Artist Spotlight | Roxane Revon

C+B: Tell us about yourself, Roxane!

RR: I'm an educator (I teach performing arts at CUNY, John Jay College & I'm sometimes a guest artist at Columbia). I enjoy hiking (and reading) in my spare time. What inspires me these days are two books written by anthropologist Philippe Descola and philosopher J.B Morizot. People may not know that I'm a bit of a tomboy.

C+B: How has your relationship with your work changed since you first started creating?

RR: It changed a lot, I started as a theater director to understand that every time I arrived in a theater where I would create my own set design I felt even more joy and excitement than when I was directing, so I evolved toward installation work and scenography to, more recently, start drawing quite naturally. I'm more of a "concept" artist if it makes any sense. I enjoy wandering around a theme and developing different atmospheres, experiments, researches from an intimate or intellectual perception.

C+B: Share some details about your process for creating.

RR: I usually have to imagine and visualize a project in my head before any creation process (and of course it usually changes along the way). The best times for me to do that are in the morning in my bed before waking up or during a walk in the park (without a phone). Then I usually work on creation and applications three to four days a week, and I like to do full days of work. The mornings are usually the more productive and creative times for me. I sometimes listen to music, especially when I work on ballet or opera scenographies, but I like the silence very much as well.

C+B: What do you hope people take away from your work?

RR: To grow more curious about the inner workings of non-moving beings such as plants and have more intimate relationships with non-human beings & their inner time as a way to grow towards a more mature and symbiotic way of living on earth.

Find and support Roxane here:

IG: roxane_revon

Website: http://www.roxanerevon.com

(Provence II, ©Roxane Revon)

If my work was a meal it would be: It starts with noodle patterns, lots of them, lots of sorts. They are delicately organized in a living dish that changes slowly as spices and other ingredients revolve around them...

I would love to be able to share my work with: I would love to show my work to Thomás Saraceno, as I deeply admire his installation work and the research & experiment he has been conducting in many fields. His work is a dialogue with forms of inhabiting and sensing the environment that have been suppressed in the Capitalocene era. I recently saw his exhibition on spider webs at The Shed in New York and went back to it many times. Saraceno has also activated projects aimed towards an ethical collaboration with the atmosphere which I find fascinating.

If I had to create in a different media, I would…: I would probably create very large murals (I'm quite interested in public art and very large formats these days) or, if I had the knowledge and talent, I would have loved to create atmospheres through sounds and music.

My ideal creative retreat: Would provide me time to read, walk in nature, imagine widely (without thinking yet of material constraint).

Roxane Revon