Aude Bray-Deperne, ceramic artist
In my studio in the Lille region, I work with stoneware.
Clay is a living material with a demanding suppleness. In contact with it, I learn that it remembers the gestures that pass through it. The memory of each pressure, each tension, each twist is imprinted in it, just as the wounds of our elders become anchored in the tissues of our bodies.
This echo between matter and bodily imprint resonates deeply. My focus turns to transmission between generations, and I perceive heritage not as a burden but as an energy to be transformed. I rely on the plasticity of the medium to shape beings conceived together: as a couple, as a family, in dialogue.
Artistic Approach
Hand-shaped, my sculptures are born from the encounter of two facing slabs of clay — like the bringing together of two bodies. Lively and sensual, these slender figures in natural hues brush against each other in silence. They gently capture the light on their curves, textures, and edges… And in the softness of their chiaroscuro, connections emerge. The silhouettes ripple, lengthen, stretch, until they become inner landscapes, emotions, resonances.
Before my work, I invite the viewer to reconsider the bonds that unite them to others and to question their place within the familial and social fabric. Each creation becomes an attempt at establishing a relationship — between self and other, between the intimate and the collective, between past and present.
About
Born in 1984 in Sèvres, the heart of French ceramics, I have been closely connected to clay since the very beginning. After studying applied arts and pursuing a career as a graphic designer in Paris, it was when I moved to northern France in 2016 that I reconnected with clay modeling and embarked on an artistic path centered on this expressive medium.
After completing a Arts du Feu program at the Douai School of Art, I spent two residency years at Ateliers Jouret in Roubaix. There, I developed my ceramic practice in my own studio and confronted my creations with the gaze of peers and the public; stoneware quickly revealed itself as my medium of choice.
From my studio in the Lille region, I sell and exhibit my work in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Japan.
With transmission at the heart of my practice, I also teach clay modeling at Poterie Family in Villeneuve d’Ascq.
Influences
Nourished by women artists such as Yayoi Kusama and her accumulations — “My life is a dot lost among millions of other dots” — and Louise Bourgeois, for whom motherhood and femininity were cherished themes, I also draw inspiration from the organic works of sculptor Valentine Schlegel, whose volumes themselves reveal the influence of Hans Arp and Henry Moore.
With a vision of life that embraces its intertwined joys and sorrows, my practice is rooted in a reflection inspired by Nietzsche’s thought. In The Birth of Tragedy, he speaks of accepting the world as it is, in its raw presence. This perspective guides me: freehand, on flattened stoneware, I trace the contours of coming volumes without seeking to idealize the forms. I receive them as they emerge, with humility and simplicity.
This philosophy also carries my exploration of origins toward founding myths. I draw inspiration from Homeric poems; a new narrative then unfolds between ancestral memories and contemporary emotions.