A graduate of ENSAD and the Beaux Arts in Paris, she is inspired by nature, esotericism and rituals that explore birth, death and transformation to give life to art, with its own time frame.

JORGE TEIXEIRA: When did you realise you wanted to be a sculptor and what was the path you took to create your own identity as an artist?
JULIETTE MINCHIN: I realised I wanted to be an artist in 2019, when I exhibited my first sculpture, which also happened to be my first wax work. La veillée au candelou is a man-sized steel cube whose walls are covered with three hundred kilos of wax and which, when melted, reveals an iron structure with a labyrinthine, geometric pattern. Seeing how the work affected the public helped me realise my ability to convey emotions. That was the day I decided to concentrate solely on my artistic career. Today, I think it’s one of the best life choices I’ve ever made. It wasn’t until the last year of my studies, in 2018, that I decided to take up sculpture. I really wanted to do something that had never been done before, to find a unique way of approaching the material while developing a new technique. My encounter with wax marked the beginning of my production, which hasn’t stopped since!

Your art has a spiritual and esoteric dimension and message. What inspires you to pursue these themes and how do you try to convey this in the final result? In my anthropological research, I draw a lot of inspiration from the sacred forms and sacred rituals that were invented by man in response to the fear of death, to lead a spiritual life, to give meaning to life, or even to bring reassurance. The challenge is to allow feelings and material as much freedom as possible. I try to awaken animistic reflexes, a universal spirituality, to create works that speak for themselves, that offer a sense of déjà vu and empathy. I chose wax because it is a pliable material. I use it for successive pieces, like a soul leaving one body for another. Wax is also the material closest to skin and flesh. It provokes a very strong empathy because we project human beings onto it and it disturbs us so much that it incarnates the living.