Nicolas Lefebvre: When I was young, I attended many auction sales, so I saw a lot of objects from different periods. I always felt very connected to Primitive Art. One day, I saw this doll of fertility with a red pearl and lots of wood – I think it was the first object I collected, I was like 14 years old. This was the starting point, it all came very natural to me. Now, twenty years later, I still do the same thing and it feels almost like a puzzle. I need to create the way I always used to, even if sometimes, I want to do other things, it always brings me back to it. It is just an automatic thing, I don’t even have to think about it.

Sometimes, there is some beautiful object but I don’t feel the energy. The first part of my job is to find interesting objects, then I might leave them for a long time in my studio. One day, I find another object that just connects, this can also happen years after I found the first object. Usually, when I clean and organize my objects, the connection may
happen.

My first passion was to be an antique dealer – I loved it. I would go everywhere in
Europe, to Morocco, Tunisia, to auction sales and antique galleries, but also to beaches
and forests. I then started to mix various objects, combining precious antiques with a piece
of nothing, like wood or coral. Like this, I created a mix of creatures, and through the
combination of these antique pieces and random elements I would find at the beach or on
the streets, the magic happened. Sometimes, a piece of plastic had stayed in the ocean
for like 20 years and changed its color or surface – this is so beautiful and really unique,
really like witnessing the travel of an element. This is what makes my art.

Yes, each time. Each object has a piece of soul and it holds a reminder of older
civilizations. It literally speaks; you can feel its past. In general, I love to work with old
pieces that human hands haven’t touched for a long time – it is really emotional. When you
buy a new piece of wood from a shop, for example, you feel no emotion at all, it is clinical,
like most of the world nowadays is. Not in Africa or India or in the Southern Hemisphere, where they don’t replace old things with new ones as much; for me, it is way more beautiful over there. You could create a stunning vase out of an old petrol container, for example, and it is magic. Here, everything is brand new but has no soul.

I am very passionate about archeology and I love Egypt, it is one of my biggest sources of inspiration [pointing to one of his art pieces]: This cross with a circle you can find in all of my sculptures, it is the key of life [Ankh]. It symbolizes fertility, mother goodness, it is the origin of everything and really speaks to me – and by origin, I really mean the beginning, before our creation of God.

Not a lot, but I dream about it. I am working with this inspiration since over 20 years so
I think it is a connection from another life.

Yes, when my mother died. I thought about this symbol a lot.

Yes, it helped me a lot because it was a connection with the invisible, just as the
connection with my mother was as well. I also think that if you want to create something,
you have to be personal, you cannot speak to everybody. Rainer Maria Rilke once said, “A
work of art is good when it has its sprung from necessity.” So, after this internal necessity,
you can share it with the world and they can understand. But, in general, it is really naive
and simple, you know. We all love the most simple things, but we always try to complicate
it. This is when it does not come from the heart anymore and loses its beauty. To me,
everything is beautiful, you just have to take a lot of layers away. Just like Buddha took
away all these layers until you could see the gold.

I find it in the essential and the radical that art suggests. It is easy to put a lot of things together, but it is not easy to just focus on a few. That, is art itself.

There is the philosophy of sobriety and the pursuit of happiness. We should not worry
too much. I, for example, I used to worry a lot, about gas, about flights, etc. A lot of
things are actually logical, we just have to listen to what is around us and be minimal about
that. We all know, for example, that eating too much meat is not good and this just makes a
lot of sense. We cannot just walk through this world with our eyes closed. We have to focus on the essential again.

Yes, it is very important now for the young generation to try to find a good balance
between this old capitalism system and the new world. We have to connect with the past
and the ancestral traditions. The 20th century was really good for evolution, but what it did
to the planet with its ideas about consumerism destroyed the planet in such a short time.
We have to learn how to live like we did before. Now, everything is too fast; the speed, but
also the internet, separated us too much.

Yeah, for sure. It is our job as an artist to work with the message of oneness and to
remind people that we are all connected, just like Bob Marley said: It is one earth and we
are all one. There are many ways to show this. But, you know, right now, I don’t speak
too much. I used to work a lot on foundations and organizations because I felt my work
was speaking to all these topics. But, at this moment, I feel I should not speak too much, a
lot has not been interpreted well. It is a hard moment, I think, a lot of things happened that
we did not control, so now, we have to prepare the future. We are the future. We are the
only way to survive this civilization. It is so important now to live minimal and to accept the
change. We are standing at the edge, at the maximum of consumerism and we have to
speak about this.

People are not open to listening. For the moment, they listen to Instagram and LVMH. But, they will change.

Oh, yes. I think the young generation, like the 14-18-year-olds, they are great. They are
on the streets, they speak about ecology, they want a better future. But it needs to be the
right time so we just have to surrender the present now.

She’s 13.

Yes. They discuss so many things and create new ideas about identity. All conversations are way more open now than before. The way parents and their children think is completely different. You can feel the urge within the young generation to connect again with the tradition, with real things and not only digital and virtual realities. We can all see that there are different ways. Today, you can study marketing for five years, but once you finish, you cannot find work. The new possibilities will come with time, just like the older generations open up the younger ones for new ways. So, the younger ones will always be wiser since they receive the experiences and wisdom from the ones before them. But, of course, we always also have opposite movements, thinking of Obama being replaced by Trump. We cannot understand everything. Democracy and justice are right next to the radical extreme and this creates fear.

It was a big totem, up to five meters, that I created for FIAC. I put sand on the floor
and cowries, thousands of them, from Africa. The object representing Mama Africa again
is mother goddess – we are all from Africa, for me, the same idea as Virgin Mary and Isis in
Egypt. It is all totally universal. So, for this art piece, I gave out cowries to people and
asked them to make a wish for the planet. In total, it was 10,000 cowries so 10,000 wishes
for the planet and humanity. You cannot imagine the big energy there was at this place.
Afterwards, I kept all the cowries in a box, I have to do something with that now. The totem
was actually a mix of a big tambour, a 2.5m music instrument from Nepal, from the
Himalayas, a piece of agriculture (earth and fiber), a piece of a window from a 17th century
Castle, and a piece of a tent from the African desert in Mali. So it was a mix of India, Africa
and French agriculture – such a beautiful combination. I want to do more of this.

Yes, with children but also elderly people, everybody was so grateful for it. I think
this is also art, to give and share something with everyone. Another time, I did a big totem
for International Women’s Day and asked women passing by on the street to put plates
with flower petals on the river. I love to do things like that, maybe I have to do a bigger
one, like for the whole world.

It is minimal. [laughs] There we go again. A lot of Primitive African art was also a huge
source of inspiration for Picasso. It’s the origin, the beginning and the source, it is a magic
place, they protect a magic philosophy. And we did terrible things to this magic. Sadly,
these terrible things are still happening. There is too much terror and corruption.
Sometimes, it is difficult to be ok with where we live and what we do. This is why I don’t
speak so much – I don’t agree with a lot of things, rather, I try to put it into my work.

From an old flamingo from the thirties. Very feminine, I really need this femininity in my
work and in my life. You see – there are a lot of circles surrounding them, a very
feminine, sweet and peaceful element. I think this world is way too square. Also, I don’t
agree with these ideas of traditional masculinity and power, I see myself more as a
feminist. My work speaks a lot about this, about Africa and women. We have to find a good
balance, also between the feminine and masculine.

Exactly.

Oh, yes. I work a lot about the mother, but also the sea – in French, it sounds the same.

Yes, all the objects in my studio are from the same color palettes, mostly from the sea
and the sand – very sweet colors.

Yes, I like when you see that colors have been touched by time, but are timeless as
well. I don’t like modern colors so much.

Yes, because I mix so many objects from different time periods. And the way I

connect and glue them is special, too, I don’t want you to see it because otherwise, it

would not look natural anymore. It confuses the collectors a lot. [laughs]