Bijoy Jain & Studio Mumbai

Bijoy Jain, architect and founder of Studio Mumbai in India, has created an exclusive exhibition that illustrates this connection. Le souffle de l’architecte, at the Fondation Cartier, is an exhibition, but it is also a physical and emotional experience. An invitation to breathe, to wander in quietude and to rediscover silence. As the artist himself puts it: “Silence, time and space are eternal, as is water, air and light our elemental construct”, he continues, “This abundance of sensory phenomena, dreams, memory, imagination, emotions and intuition stem from this pool of experiences, embedded in the corners of our eyes, in the soles of our feet, in the lobes of our ears, in the timbre of our voices, in the whisper of our breath and in the palm of our hands”.

Through our senses, we can feel light and shadow, lightness and gravity, wood, brick, earth, stone, water… We can experience materials that construct our existence. Bijoy Jain’s exhibition endows the audience with a space where one can rediscover those materials and become in resonance with them through the power of silence. The installation is composed of architectural fragments that can go from stone and terracotta sculptures, to facades of traditional Indian dwellings, rendered panels, lines of pigment drawn with thread and bamboo structures inspired by tazias.

Structures and objects that materialize the infinity and intimacy of the world we live in, all crafted in tune with the breath and shaped by hand, which is an integral component in Bijoy’s interpretation of his discipline: “As an architect, it is about the consideration one gives to the making of things, about being immersive and attentive to the environment, the materials, and its inhabitants, in the possibility for space and architecture to be inclusive”. 

In fact, Le souffle de l’architecte explores art, architecture and material in dialogue with the space that holds it: Jean Nouvel’s iconic building. Adapting and immersing into its shape and form, Bijoy’s exhibition allows the observer to wander across its spaces while contemplating all the materials that represent essentiality. And it does it, also, enhanced by the creations of Chinese painter living in Beijing HU Liu and Turkish-born Danish ceramist living in Paris Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye. Resonance, dialogue with material and the ritual mastery of gesture are the main pillars of the three artists’ conception of art, and this understanding is perceived throughout the exhibition.

The Indian architect’s work, which reflects a concern for the relationship between man and nature, is complemented by HU Liu’s monochrome black drawings made of graphite that reveal the essence of natural elements, together with Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye’s ceramics where existence is represented by the weightlessness of clay. In total, there are over 400 pieces that constitute testimonies of Studio Mumbai’s tactile and manual expertise.

The Studio, formed by an interdisciplinary group of architects, engineers, master builders, artisans, technicians and artists across continents, encompasses a collective where diversity allows the expression of the vital elements through a wide and crafted materiality. Water, air, earth and light are the basis of humankind and the basis of nature, and Le souffle de l’architect is the occasion to contemplate them within Jean Nouvel’s building in Paris. 

In, Le souffle de l’architect, open to the public until April 21st, one can observe architecture’s sensorial emanations, feeling a link to the elements and to the emotional relationship with space. It is intimacy, it is sentiment, it is contemplation, and it is quietude. A space where the breath of life accompanies the wanderer through the observation of the breath of architecture. A trail that takes the observed inside and outside, of the building, of the exhibition, and of the essential elements that constitute our existence, pointing at the urgency of healing the relationship between man and nature.