Caribaï

 

Caribaï is a Franco-Venezuelan painter born in Tokyo in 1984. During her early childhood in the Japanese capital, the play of light and shadow through the paper windows(shôji) of the traditional house where she lived nurtured her budding imagination. In 2008, she obtained the Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique. She also studied Chinese painting and calligraphy for four years with a Taiwanese master, immersing herself in the traditional aesthetics of the Far Eastern landscape. After studying at the Beaux-Arts, she went on to study engraving in Brussels, where she lived for nine years. She travelled regularly to Florence to learn more about the fresco technique, which she particularly liked.

Enriched by all these influences, Caribaï has developed a highly personal body of work. Although paper, the Far Eastern material par excellence, is the main medium for her artistic work, she has developed her own composite technical approach, combining collage, painting and engraving.
Her work can be found in private collections in Japan, the United States, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

In 2021, the Musée des Arts Asiatiques in Nice is devoting a monumental solo exhibition to her entitled “L’empreinte du vent”. To mark the occasion, she created the original work of the same name, comprising 43 panels installed over 33 metres
To mark the occasion, she created the original work of the same name, comprising 43 panels installed over 33 metres, as well as Monde flottant (Floating World), a non-woven and Japanese paper installation over 5 metres high. The museum subsequently acquired a triptych, which is now part of its permanent collection.

The exhibition is complemented by a forty-page book entitled Caribaï – L’empreinte du vent, published by Silvana Editoriale.

 

“My painting opens onto an inner world made of transparencies, lightness, tectonic movements, traces and reliefs, chasms. It gives us the opportunity to see and feel an intimate journey, on the edge, silent.
It is nourished by reminiscences of sensations.
First, there is a moment of encounter with the world, experienced with intensity, which I immerse myself in.
Then oblivion erases the sharp precision of reality. I look for a language made of crumpled papers, ink, reliefs and traces, to give shape to these moments that have been erased and yet have left their mark.
This work of recollection and condensation attempts to restore the energy of these moments. It is not a question of a specific landscape, or of recognising a particular object, but rather, as oriental painters do so well, it is a question of gathering in oneself and letting this primary energy re-emerge in a movement of transformation.
Through the slow elaboration of a composition combining painting, collage and engraving on wood (Dépaysages series), the superimposition of Japanese paper veils that I paint (Ouranos series), or even installations (Ecran – rêve , Monde – flottant ).

April – August 2021

 

On the occasion of his monumental solo exhibition “L’empreinte du vent” at the Musée des Arts Asiatiques de Nice (May-December 2021), the museum has published a book of some forty pages entitled Caribaï – L’empreinte du vent, published by Silvana Editoriale, available at the gallery, and has acquired a triptych which is now part of the permanent collection.