Creative process

Born in 1965 – Lives and works in Olivet (Loiret)

“Power lies in simplicity.”

From a young age, contact with nature has been the source of Mane’s creative process. This connection with nature sparked her genuine desire to create, to shape materials, to engage in a dialogue with them, and to transform them through her work.

This creative drive has never left her. Alongside her professional career in business, she devoted herself to sculpture. She found an intimate connection with the material, initially with clay and plaster, and then learned techniques of molding, wax, and bronze while working at an art foundry in Tourrettes-sur-Loup.

2014 marked a turning point in her artistic journey. During a residency at Espace Solidor (Cagnes-sur-Mer), dedicated to contemporary jewelry, she discovered cardboard, a humble material that gradually revealed its complexity under her fingers: its flexibility and resilience, its malleability and robustness. In her Provençal workshop, Mane Phély refined her artistic gesture and perfected her technique. In 2017, she joined the Métiers d’Art » boutique “La Créative” in Biot and then opened her own workshop-boutique in 2018. That same year, she exhibited at the Kultur Reverenz gallery in Basel. Drawing on techniques acquired through her jewelry, she created unique pieces, elegant sculptural jewelry she called her “wearable sculptures.”

In 2019, Mane Phély concluded her residency. Her move to her studio in Olivet, on the banks of the Loiret, marked a new phase in her work. Here, she continues her conversation with the material, seeking to elevate and transcend it, revealing its hidden qualities. She works on large-format wall sculptures, evocative of the nature that inspires her: an ancestral, geological mineral nature, an abundant botanical nature caught in endless cycles – volcanic lands, mysterious forests, spring vegetation.