I make my art starting from the material act of handicraft, of handling matter. I first make an iron mesh of my statues. Then I put clay on it. The next step is painting the clay and then the whole thing goes in the oven and that is exactly the moment when chance takes over... Instead of making (Technè or culture) it is more like growing (fusis of nature). It is always magic: the meeting of the elements earth and fire. I finally discover these new creatures from the dust.

It is baking, it is in a way cooking. Putting things in the oven, carefully watching how colors generate from natural chemical processes, things like that. This is my craft and it makes me living. Baking (cooking) is one of the most essential activities of humans as species.

This very traditional approach of art as craft, is also present in the form of my art. Not that I really copy traditional statues of tribal styles, but I reinvent 'archetypes' of 'primitive art', totems if you want, from my own processing of matter, from my memory, my vague nostalgia, my longing for a continent that I left since ages. The soil of Africa...
But my work is not just African, there are some elements from ancient Greek art (mycenean), prehistoric Venusses, oriental art, etc.

I always try to make primordial figures, humans in their most naked, primitive being, as tokens of some basic existential condition: loneliness, fear, desire. But most of all: being there. Being part of. Going towards. A primordial presence, a trace of human culture on the face of planet earth. Each statue is a trace, more than a portrait. That is why I like my statues together, as a group, a community, a group of totems, a forest as well. For me making is a process, a stream. It is about joy of living, of making. Even if the joy of life is by nature fleeting and transient, art should capture it in an enduring way. I hope my statues convey a sort of solidified ecstasy.