Jephan de Villiers

Arboglyphes is the sequel to Jephan de Villiers’ book, Figures of Silence, published in 2021.

Jephan de Villiers’ writings fly from conscience to conscience. They might be Arabic, Indian or African. Ho­rizontal or vertical, over the years they have become a series of musical scores. Scales, even. Not a day goes by without him writing.

“I always write standing up, as if my body was already moving towards something else, the other, as if I was about to move across the paper.”

Every day, this instinctive movement towards the other provides a vital thread, a connection in an existence surrounded by glyphs, whose airy furrows have dug their way into the incandescent humus of memory.

From the Preface by Caroline Lamarche

It was around the age of fourteen that Jephan de Villiers began to make his huge earth villages from the soil, leaves and pieces of bark that he collected in his grandmother’s garden in Chesnay, near Versailles. The circus, theatre and mime were also among his passions. His work as a sculptor and poet has continued ever since. In the 1960s, he encountered Constantin Brancusi’s reconstituted studio. In 1966, his Structures Aquatiales went on show in Paris. A year later, he settled in London where his work was shown regularly. In 1976, he discovered the Forêt de Soignes, the Sonian Forest near Brussels, where his Voyage en Arbonie (Journey into Arbonia) began. Since 2000, he has lived and worked in Charente-Maritime, not far from the River Gironde. His work invites us to set aside our daily lives and discover an imaginary civilisation that seems to have emerged from a past where humans and nature lived as one. A number of exhibitions have been devoted to his work. His sculptures can be seen in the open air in parks and public spaces, as well as in museums and private collections. Des Fragments de mémoires (Fragments of Memory) have been shown in exhibitions across the world.

Text in English and French.