A closer look at the EvaZéSir duo's creative process
Can you tell us who you are and your artistic practice?
We are EvaZéSir, Eva & Sir, a couple and duo of visual artists. We create paintings (tableaux & frescoes) and installations in urban spaces.
What is your background and how did you get into design?
We come from different backgrounds: Eva, a trained painter and art teacher, began creating small-format works in her studio. In 2008, she met Sir, a self-taught artist who started out graffitiing in disused factories and explored the world of monumental stencils. Eva invited him to create in her studio, and Sir proposed street experiments. Initially, their collaborations were limited to painting, but gradually they began to work with wood, objects and salvaged materials found on the streets, enabling them to create installations combining volume, relief collage and paint.
In your day-to-day work as artists, what inspires you? What triggers the creation of a work?
Places and the history of a place inspire us. But also the encounter with an object, an old photo, an old piece of furniture, a board yellowed by time... These obsolete objects take us back to pieces of life. Lives we like to imagine and reinvent. Our creations are not only aesthetically pleasing, they also enable us to convey messages, reflecting social, ecological, political or poetic conditions...
Can you tell us how you go about creating a work of art? What are the different stages of creation?
It all starts with an encounter...
If it's a place, we start by researching its history. The history of the place carries us away and inspires us. Whether it's through the passage of inhabitants, or past events. They are the source of our creations. Our aim: to make places speak.
If it's an object, it will be the starting point for the work and the narrative. An object that has belonged to someone will be associated with others. The association of several pieces of "life" will lead to a story that is often highly romanticized and imagined. Giving a second life to neglected materials is a prerequisite for our studio works and installations.
From the composition of wood and objects to their reappropriation, characters will be born to inhabit this romance. Their gaze will give them strength and reflect their personality, even their thoughts. Nostalgia, materials, the passage of time and memories are our building blocks and the main mediums of our creation.