Biography
Ann-Isabelle Guyomard, alias Oïjha, is a contemporary visual artist made of a unique blend, altogether polar and tropical, scientific and artistic, body-related and spiritual. Raised by the art painters of her family, she develops at an early age a sense of colors and art materials. Later, during her teenage in Norway, she meets and works with the French sculptor Babou. Fascinated by polar regions, she graduates in 2010 as a Doctor in Antarctic Law from the University of Nantes (France), and uses her knowledge to create Land Art in pristine areas of our planet: Antarctic, Arctic, Tasmania, Reunion Island. Influenced by Andy Goldsworthy, her art is a tool to promote environmental values as she organizes photographic exhibitions, publishes on the protection of the Cultural Heritage of Mankind, and makes sculptures using natural and industrial materials. The colors of her paintings relate to polar climate and deep sea. She also uses leaves of pure gold to play with the light and as a way of transcendence. In 2011, she is awarded "Talent of Contemporary Art" by the Research Center in Arts and Heritage Conservation, Toulon (France).
Art is the core of her life. She joins several contemporary dance companies and develops a unique body language, directed by the choreographs F. Chedmail, C. Amato and T. Jourdain. She performs solos every year at the International Dance Festival of Reunion Island. In 2015, her exhibition "Dance on canvas" shows new paintings with large canvas on which the dancing body is used as a tool, after Yves Klein, but also with dripping movements after Jackson Pollock. In her studio in Reunion Island, she builds big size canvas and includes corral and volcanic sands to the large quantities of paint. The chromatics is still simple and deep, the movement is minimalist, powerful and precise, the use of pure gold remains.
In 2016, she graduates from the School of High Studies in Sophrology (Paris) and explores the inter-related physical and spiritual dimensions of the human, following the perception "the body is the consciousness, the consciousness is the body". This intimate and transcendent approach gives birth to sculptures of human organs in state of ecstasy: in the nine sculptures of “Adoration”, the tissues, the members and the bones turn into gold and link the profane and sacred sides of the human. In this minimalist conception, the human being is no more than its vertical axis, a column, a gold circle on the ground between Earth and sky, a door to the inner infinity of its own self. Oïjha redefines the concept of the human in time and space, melting altogether its energy and body, ready for an exploration in its infinite small parts - intracosmos - and infinite large universe - extracosmos. She goes into research, dance and painting with the objective of revealing the consciousness of being and organizes in 2017 with the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF) and the French Polar Institute (IPEV) the first exhibition in Adelie Land, Antarctica: "GAMMA - Growth of Antarctic Mindful Modern Art". She is finalist of the Berlin International Social Art Award 2017 for her Land Art work "Antarctic Consciousness", presenting a gold circle on a rock of Adelie Land, above the bank ice and icebergs.
She produces a complete body of work which demonstrates an overall signature style instantly recognizable with the "Oïjha's gesture": a unique, wide, powerful and precise movement in deep dark blue colors with pure gold. The use of large canvas enables an immediate dance expression and makes a link between the visible and the invisible, the energetic and the body. It deals with the universal intimacy, our common core as humans and the perpetual movement inherent to life. With her unique gesture, Oïjha talks about our doubts, our imperfections and our joy. Aware of the pulse of the world, she calls to care about the importance of the primary sensation, which a messenger of the True. Her minimalist style enables the silence and the raise of what exists here and now. As her art is about perceiving the infinity within two breaths and the enjoyment of senses, she gets inspiration from Marina Abramovic and Ma Liuming while performing her dance duos "Extrasystole", "Synchronicity" et "Archives". The gesture turns into an extension of heart beats and talks about the disassociation between the body and the mind. The body is also conceived as a tool to perceive synchronicity phenomenon which are transformed into dance. If Oïjha tells us about deprivation and pain, it is to highlight and contact the intrinsic generous nature of the human, as shown in "Bloom", a dance on canvas made with tropical colors, or "Rising", a white monochrome where a human shape appears with gold circles.
For Oïjha, painting, creating Land Art and dancing all come from the same source and are translations of a same state of being. As a tribute to Angelin Preljocaj, she dances on twin canvas the exact "Annonciation" choregraphy. She explores the link between consciousness and the subconscious in many paintings, such as "Contact" where a thin layer of gold meets an immensity of undiscovered gold, her "Selfies" as large paintings of dance on canvas, and her "Underneath" marine blue collection. Her femininity is expressed in a version of "The Origin of the World" after Gustave Courbet and Lucio Fontana, where a long cut in a red canvas is covered with gold. In many paintings, a gold circle represents the human consciousness in its vertical axis, the footprint of the link from the inner Earth to the universe through the human body. It is all together a door to the inner self and the outter space, as well as light turned into matter. After Pierre Soulages, Oïjha states that light comes from darkness.
Annie d'Herpin
Vice President of the Jury
Styles and Tendencies in International Art, Beijing 2015
STATEMENT
"At the beginning is the sensation. Before any thought, before any representation, there is this immediately true information which is my anchor. I want to represent the consciousness of being in its intimacy, its history, color, taste, smell, sound and texture. The sensation is inviting us to think with all these dimensions. Only after come the emotions linked to this sensation, and then the gesture which unite sensation and emotion in a single act. Being a visual artist means to me dancing with the matter as a result of these coats of information. The awakening of sensoriality is a discipline. The identification of the sensations relies on an ability to concentrate immediately. Once this identification is over, I concentrate on the emotions linked with the sensations: I contact myself within time and space, within my story and the present moment, within my deep self and the surface of myself. The result goes through my system of references as something complex and unrefined, an invisible shape which gets body progressively, until it appears as a gesture.
The gesture is the synthesis of this experience, the ultimate simplification, what remains of this organic and emotional process. I receive and I show with my body, my body-consciousness as undisassociated entities. I want this gesture to be precise and I need to give it time before being expressed. The image and the gesture appear together, often in dreams. They are completely integrated into my body until they truly represent the initial state of being. When this association image-gesture is fully present, and only when it is so, I dance and I paint. After several days of maturation, it is fulgurate and a state of grace. The gesture can involve a part of my body or my body as a whole. It is the dance of the inner.
With this process, I often target in my paintings the links between the conscious and the subconscious, with the use of deep dark blue and black colors like in "Selfies", "Underwater blooming", "Underwater constellation", "Ravages", "Underneath, "Medea", ou "Step One". I also talk about the expansion and suspension of the body, which I represent with tropical colors (orange, blue) and white as in "Rising", "Bloom" and "Baïkal". I explore the states of exstasy with the red color used in "Annonciation III", "The Origin of the World", "Your kiss" and "Iku". And Gold. I use pure 24 carats gold leaves in many creations. Gold is the light turned into matter. It is the footprint of the human vertical axis, shown in the "Ilulissat" series where it is all together a door to our own inner infinity - intracosmos - and the infinity of space - extracosmos. As such, gold is also used as a column in the selfie painting "Underneath", and as constellations in the nine sculptures “Adoration”. I also use gold to highlight the shore lines, where it represents the frontier between worlds, the sensitive line, the permeable junction, like a skin. I see an identification between my own system of reference and the nature around me. Whatever I use, painting, dancing, sculpture or Land Art, it is an organic transcendental art where the nature is my mirror and where there is no real difference between this star and the perception I have of my ethmoid.
There is much joy in the experience of the senses with the consciousness of being a human. My body is limited, my consciousness is unlimited and I use these tools to explore the infinite rainbow of the human feelings, from torture to emptiness, from tenderness to love, because life is nothing else than a will to pulse, the urgency of being rather than the nothing.
In this exploration, I rely on several masters like Yves Klein, Pierre Soulages and Marina Abramovic. I also give a tribute to the choregrapher Angelin Preljocaj, to whom I dedicate my paintings "Annonciation", after his play. In the infinity, I am trying to tell the story of being, the consciousness of being".
Oïjha
