artist/ Sabine Blanchard
France
Sabine Blanchard is a French “multi-artist” with Flemish roots. Through her various expatriations and her passion for ethnology, she brings a liberated perspective to everyday objects, from which she draws her pictorial material. In her view, “everything already exists; there’s no need to manufacture new forms.” She chooses to reinterpret industrial, anonymous, modest products graphically to awaken their visual potential beyond their already familiar functionality. Drawing on her architectural studies at Saint Luc in Tournai, she approaches screws, puzzles, brooms, arches, and goblets with extreme precision, treating each work like a building façade, punctuated by solids and voids, constantly played upon by daylight. Her 3D compositions are carefully woven, sculpted, and layered until the balance is perfect. This quest has become her personal “philosopher’s stone.”
A self-proclaimed advocate of “modest beauty,” Blanchard invites the viewer into her poetic, often humorous, almost “childlike” vision, in the sacred sense. She also takes care to perform a ritual of “passing” each work on, as if to imbue it with positive energy and baptize it into a new destiny. Her 3D pieces are displayed freely, settled into a setting, or shaped around the chosen object.
In 2012, her relocation to the United Arab Emirates was a turning point. A monthly feature in Madame Magazine led to the success of her first illustrated book, Diary of a Parisian in Dubai, in 2017. But Dubai, known for its superlatives, also serves as an initiatory ground for many artists from across the Middle East. Inspired by Indian markets, hawkers selling cables, ropes, cages, and more, she embarked on her first abstract associations. She made her solo debut at La Galerie Nationale on Alserkal Avenue, a prominent hub for contemporary art. Her “diversions” also extend to urban photography, where she deconstructs the graphics of a site, city, or crowd to create a multi-layered, allegorical reading.
Sabine Blanchard was invited to Dubai Design Days. She continued with private exhibitions, including at the Alliance Française in 2018 and the French Ambassador’s Residence in Abu Dhabi in 2019. Her works are held by private collectors in Paris, Dubai, Lebanon, Italy, and the United States.
Her passion for ethnology is at the heart of her work as a visual artist. She published her first novel, And Divine, I Became (among the Papuans) (Édition Vérone), where writing is part of an encompassing creative “WHOLE,” driven by poetry, dreams, and a certain transcendence of the everyday.
In 2020, Sabine exhibited at the French Pavilion at the Dubai World Expo, presenting a Floral Jungle celebrating the French art of tableware in collaboration with prestigious brands (Bernardaud, Baccarat, Lalique, Christofle).
In 2024, she was commissioned by Louis Dimension to create specific artworks for the Sandbourne Hotel (5 stars) in Santa Monica, California.
