Clémence Devienne was born in 1980.
At a very early age, when she was just five years old, she showed a deep desire to create, asking to take painting and drawing lessons. She took her first steps using oil painting techniques, developing an intimate relationship with the medium and colors.
In 2013, she began a series of landscapes inspired by Tahiti, based on her grandfather’s slides taken during his year-long stay in the navy. These works are both a personal tribute and an exploration of family memory, where the photographic image is transformed into vibrant painting.
From 2015 onwards, her work turned decisively towards portraiture. She developed several series marked by a strong human and social commitment: a project in New Orleans focusing on the guardians of local traditions, a series devoted to refugees from the Stalingrad camp in Paris, and portraits of veterans, witnesses to collective memories.
Biography
Having always been immersed in a family environment linked to mental health, Clémence Devienne now focuses on translating intense emotions and the fragility of the soul. In her series on madness, faces are transformed, sometimes dissolving, revealing the shadow of illness. Abstraction blends with figurative art, or erases it entirely, to better suggest this transition into a trance-like state.
Through her work, Clémence Devienne explores the shifting boundaries between identity, memory, and otherness, revealing the invisible and the unspeakable, and placing humanity at the heart of her artistic approach.
