"Allowing oneself to be transformed by the forest"

Experimenting or creating in situ, in the forest, with researchers, institutions... as I undertake in my work, is a way to free oneself from the idea of nature that is protected, studied, sanctified, or viewed as a work of art: the landscape.

In other words, a nature that has been distanced since antiquity, objectified and separated from the living. By building the idea of cohabitation, like reconstructing a biocenosis, working with the forest. Neither subjected nor dominated, but being alongside, with. But above all, seeking to be transformed in return, in one's own questions as a researcher, artist, in experimental protocols, in "modeling" techniques. Changing perspectives, acting in reaction. Ultimately, I hope to contribute to building a subject-to-subject relationship, which seems to be the only long-term response to the urgency.

Sara Favriau graduated in 2007 from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (studio of Giuseppe Penone). In 2014, she was awarded the Discovery Prize by the Friends of the Palais de Tokyo and the Best Installation Prize at the emerging YIA Art Fair. In 2020, she began a long-term collaboration with INRAe and biologists from the Mediterranean Forest Unit. Sara Favriau questions both the artwork and its ecosystem, its circularity. She evokes forms, symbols, and processes from popular nature and transposes them. A cabin, a canoe, a bow, a tree, voguing... are elements that are part of her formal and conceptual vocabulary. It is a meeting of past, present, and future that she has been developing for years. This blending is at the heart of her intentions: to intertwine metamorphosis, fiction, and essay in a simple form. Through essential actions, like a tree-canoe crossing a sea to find a forest. A work that renews itself and thus questions its status as a sanctuary (exhibition, acquisition), toward a possible status as a living being (evolving, replayed, transformed, altered artwork). A virtuous blend approached with humor, where the poetic form exists even in the titles of her works.

In 2016, Sara Favriau had a solo exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo titled "La redite en somme, ne s'amuse pas de sa répétition singulière." In 2017, she exhibited in a solo show at the Château de Chaumont, Independent Brussels, and conducted a residency on "Arts and the World of Work" with the Ministry of Culture in partnership with CNEAI. In 2018, she participated as a guest of honor in the first Bangkok Beyond Bliss Biennale. In 2019, she participated in the French Los Angeles Exchange (FLAX) residency and took part in the first Rabat Biennale. In 2020, she was invited to Villa Noailles for the International Festival of Fashion, where she exhibited an installation of sculpted trees from a forest plot studied by INRAe near Marseille. In 2021, a tree-canoe crossed the Mediterranean Sea from the Salins des Pesquiers in Hyères, where the canoe was created, to the Carmignac Foundation on Porquerolles Island.

In 2021/2022, she conducted a residency with the Royal Commission RCU and French Agency Afalula, operated by Manifesto, in AlUla, Saudi Arabia. Her work is present in numerous public collections, including FMAC (City of Paris collection), FDAC Essonne, FRAC Normandie Caen, FRAC Centre, MAC VAL.