Born and raised in France, I’ve lived most of my professional life as an expatriate, leaving Paris more than 20 years ago for London then Hong Kong, where my family and I have been living since 2010.

This “expat life” has been (and still is) immensely enriching. We discovered new countries, new cultures, met new friends, got exposed to different point of views and philosophies. My four children were born outside of France, and are true “children of the world”, with friends from and on all continents and a truly international upbringing. As for myself, I’m fast approaching the moment when I will have spent more of my life outside of France, than in my country of origin.

As a result, I tend to ponder on topics like cultural identity, roots, and belonging, and what counts as an individual’s background, especially as a father of children brought up outside of their historical familial roots. How long does it take for the culture of your host country to permeate your “original” French identity ? What does “being French” mean for my children, who have lived all their lives outside of my birth country ?

My “suspended nostalgia” series is inspired by the slightly disjointed cultural identity of my deep French and western roots, and my status as a Hong Kong based “Gweilo”, a guest in my adopted home.


My work consists of two distinct but related parts :

On one hand I alter Hong Kong maps, by drawing simple colorful lines around the land masses (kind of “concentrically”) and then adding words in English, in Chinese characters, or traditional Chinese or Hong Kongese symbols (like the traditional double happiness symbol). Hong Kong Maps suit this technique very well, as the jagged contours of the islands provide a lot of asperities for my coloured lines to follow and avoid.

I’ve always been drawn to maps, both for their esthetic characteristics, as well as their nature as tools to apprehend, control and appropriate your immediate environment.

Using Hong Kong maps was therefore an obvious choice, the island having been my family’s home for the last 14 years. I source them from the official government’s map service, which publishes a variety of maps of Hong Kong SAR. This medium is a way for me to “appropriate” this land, which, even after 14 years and counting, remains foreign in so many ways.

The other part of my work is a continuity of my work on maps. I draw on black and white photographic pictures which I take during my day-to-day life or my travels, which I then adorn with colours (once again simple lines), which either tend to re-introduce natural hues in the image (but not quite!), or ad shapes and hues, to rob it completely of its naturalness.

On some photos I use the same technique than on the maps, drawing lines around the topography of the picture, in the blank, negative space. On others, the technique change, as I either draw my own lines, or simply add lights and colours to nocturnal cityscapes or landscapes.

The subjects of these photos ranges from landscapes, seascapes, urban night pictures, trees… taken in France, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia,…

The common features of these two vectors is that both allow me to subvert my initial support, my starting point (map or photo) to create something new, where the viewer can find beauty in the “skewed’ familiarity of the image. I try to make art about beautiful objects, landscapes, moments, places, to show or discover beauty in everybody’s everyday experience and bring them closer to my and the viewer’s personal cultural experience.

An avid amateur of art for a long time (for as long as I can remember really), I have always yearned to find a medium to express creativity. I have adopted alcohol markers by accident, having bought a set for my children on a market in Hong Kong, and not looked back. This fairly accessible medium, combined with the simple process of the “concentric lines in the negative space” allowed me to create artworks that clearly surpass my technical abilities, and gain confidence to tackle different mediums in the future.

Ultimately « Suspended nostalgia » is a reflection on the power of suggestion of images, an exploration the universality of experiences, and finally a quest for beauty in random and common situations and places.