Long considered a mere preparatory step to bronze casting, wax is now being rediscovered as an artistic medium in its own right. In this training, inspired by the approach of artist Mona Oren, wax is no longer a transitory tool, but a final, expressive, and living material capable of embodying memory, gesture, and emotion.
Delicate in its finest, wax offers a unique visual richness: organic, sensual, and vulnerable, it melts, evolves, and acquires a patina, yet always retains the imprint of handwork. Composed of subtle blends of animal, vegetable, and mineral waxes, it can become skin, flower, breath, or trace, depending on the artist's intentions and gestures. Worked in thin layers using plaster molds, it allows for the creation of refined, almost translucent forms, playing with light in a subtle balance between fragility and presence.
Alongside artist Mona Oren, this training invites you to explore the multiple facets of wax sculpture, combining technical training, reflection on the material, and visual experimentation. It offers an opportunity to embrace this unique medium, to understand both its constraints and its freedoms, to develop a personal artistic language, where each form reveals the trace of the creative gesture.
After an immersion in the refined world of Burano lace, a remarkably fine needlepoint lace, renowned for the richness of its patterns, the precision of its execution, and its roots in a centuries-old artisanal tradition, Mona Oren invites you to transpose it into her own practice. Participants will draw inspiration from it to create wax works, which they will freely reinterpret under her attentive and caring eye.
At the end of the training, the intern will be able to:
Encountering the Material
morning
afternoon
Introduction to wax as an artistic medium / morning and afternoon
Further development and creation / morning and afternoon
In-depth study and creation/ morning and afternoon
Wax as a Sensitive Language
For over twenty years, Mona Oren has developed a unique sculptural oeuvre, rooted in matter, gesture, and time. While her work regularly involves drawing, photography, video, and installation, it is sculpture—and more specifically wax sculpture—that constitutes its center of gravity.
Contrary to tradition, which considers wax a transitory medium, preparatory to bronze casting, Mona Oren uses it as a final material, an artistic language in its own right, of extreme delicacy. She chooses this material for its organic, sensual, and vulnerable dimension, and for its ability to embody impermanence: wax melts, evolves, and acquires a patina over time, but always retains traces of gesture and emotion.
Made from a subtle blend of animal, vegetable, and mineral waxes, worked using processes she has long perfected, the wax becomes skin, flower, breath, and memory in her hands. Each work is constructed in thin layers, using silicone, plaster, or resin molds, reaching infinitesimal thicknesses, sometimes only one or two millimeters. The result: pure, almost translucent forms that capture the light and the gaze in a constant interplay of strength and fragility.
Winner of the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for the Intelligence of the Hand® in 2018, Mona Oren has established herself as a contemporary wax maker, at the intersection of art, craftsmanship, and research. For several years, she has been conducting an in-depth exploration of white wax, with a demand for precision and an almost alchemical attention to the material's reactions. This in-depth work recently took her to Japan, during residencies at Villa Kujoyama in 2022 and 2025, where she discovered Hazé vegetable wax made from tallow trees. Seduced by its finesse and the affinities between Japanese craftsmanship and her own practice, she is now pursuing a new phase of research there, also incorporating other materials such as rice wax, Washi paper, and Sumi ink.
Over the years, her practice has evolved from an inspiration initially fueled by nature and the plant world to a more abstract, introspective expression, blending symbolism, modesty, sensuality, and discreet humor. Each piece becomes a fragment of history, a sensitive trace of the ephemeral, which the artist situates in installations, photographs, or videos, playing on transpositions of scale and temporality.
Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions, in France and abroad. She also collaborates with luxury brands such as Guerlain, Dior, and Chaumet, and develops a practice of transmission, which she considers essential: she trains apprentices in her workshop, teaches at the Ateliers Terre & Feu in Paris, and regularly leads workshops in prestigious schools and institutions.
With work that is both demanding and poetic, Mona Oren sculpts wax as one writes a poem: in thin layers, in silences, and in lights. She explores the tension between what fades and what remains, making this unstable material a true medium of memory, of the sensitive, and of the living.
In France, AFDAS is currently the only skills operator (OPCO) that can support training in Venice, under certain conditions.
This funding is primarily aimed at intermittent performers and affiliated or subject artist-authors.
If this applies to you, contact your AFDAS advisor in advance to prepare your application. Campus Mana can provide the necessary documents upon request.
The price includes training as well as materials and personal protective equipment. However, it does not cover transportation, accommodation, or full board (breakfast, lunch, and dinner).
Contact us inscriptions@campusmana.com
Isola di San Servolo,
1, Venice, Italy 30124
T: +33 (0)3 86 45 23 42
contact@campusmana.com
