Mane Phély

Mane Phély was born in Nogent-sur-Seine in 1965. From an early age, she felt a compelling need to shape and transform materials – a creative impulse that has never left her. Her early work with clay, plaster and bronze led her to an art foundry, where she honed her skills and mastered traditional moulding, wax modelling and bronze casting techniques.

A pivotal moment came in 2014 during a residency at Espace Solidor in Cagnes-sur-Mer, dedicated to contemporary jewelry. There, she discovered cardboard, an ordinary material she elevated into an artistic medium. This marked a decisive shift in her work toward transforming the familiar into the poetic and the precious. Her initial explorations led to a series of jewelry pieces she describes as “wearable sculptures”. Exhibited in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Vallauris, Biot, and Basel, these works blur the boundaries between art and ornament.

Today, Mane Phély creates both wall-mounted works and sculptures in which cardboard becomes a field of exploration and formal invention. Drawing inspiration from nature, her creations engage in a dialogue with art history and its sacred forms. Her practice oscillates between works of deep, almost volcanic blackness, radiating a powerful, primal energy, and works of exquisite delicacy, imbued with a sense of grace and preciousness. The fragmented brilliance of Byzantine mosaics reveals itself in her gilded surfaces, built from minute, layered fragments. Like the tesserae of a mosaic, her delicately cut pieces of cardboard capture light and scatter it into vibrant, shimmering reflections. Some works recall the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, their thickness and overlapping pages echoed in the stratified layers of cardboard, while delicate touches of gold evoke their refined beauty. In other pieces, the material transforms into lace or filigree, reminiscent of Baroque quilling – those fine, gilded paper scrolls that once adorned reliquaries and exalted the sacred. Mane Phély’s use of gold echoes that of Gustav Klimt: it is not mere ornamentation, but a living substance that envelops the surface, suggesting an intensity that is both sensual and iconic. She skillfully elevates cardboard, restoring the material’s original significance while endowing it with the brilliance of noble, precious metals. The resulting transformation is striking, provoking immediate wonder and emotion.

Through her singular visual language, Mane Phély creates works that stand as contemporary icons, where light and matter intertwine to reveal a beauty suspended between the intimate and the sacred.