Olivia De Bona

Parisian artist, born in 1985, Olivia de Bona has been developing for more than 15 years a poetic lexicon made of images that marry her personal imagination with collective imagery and that she declines according to the supports and materials that her creative curiosity leads her to encounter.
Graduating in Applied Arts and Animation Cinema in 2005, Olivia de Bona quickly got rid of the digital medium to satisfy her interest in craftsmanship. Unable to dissociate the work from its medium, she considers each creation as a whole and it is often a technical curiosity that inspires her a new project.
In recent years, she has focused on developing the almost extinct technique of straw marquetry. This involves assembling real strands of straw, previously pressed and colored, by gluing them together, one by one, strand by strand, on a wooden support and in a meticulous manner, to form the patterns and scenes of her works. It is an extremely long technique, which requires a lot of patience and skill; Olivia estimates that she can produce a maximum of 10cm2 per day…
If Olivia de Bona's technical mastery sublimates her figurative universe, the narrative aspect of her work remains the most important, thus touching on the tale and the intimate. Nature, the animal, the dream, the nude, the woman, the hair are all leitmotifs that allow her to structure her artistic mythology and to lose herself in the representation of the material that is so dear to her.
Olivia de Bona has recently been exhibited at the Beers Gallery in London, and was a resident artist at the Parcours d'Art Contemporain in Amiens.