Immersed in the memories of Alizée Cayla
Discussion with the artist
A multidisciplinary artist, Alizée Cayla lives and works in Toulouse. Through a play of composition juggling form, colour, lines and materials, she offers a vision of reality imbued with dreaminess and sensitivity.
Considering the world around her as a life-size painting, she thinks of each project as a piece of a large, moving puzzle.
When it came to tackling the theme and immersing herself in the creative process, she was guided by her memories of Australia, her youth spent on the shores of the Mediterranean, and the light of her native region.
Can you briefly introduce yourself?
I am an artist and designer based in Toulouse. My work straddles several disciplines and spans different media: illustration, ceramics, painting and textiles. It stems from a need to give form to a sensory experience. Colour is often the starting point: it acts as an anchor, a way of organising perception or emotion. From there, forms appear and circulate between image and volume, depending on the project and my desires. I explore this transitional zone where sensation becomes structure, and where form allows it to take shape.
You are described as a multidisciplinary artist. What led you to combine different practices?
It comes very naturally to me. I've always found it difficult to limit myself to a single medium: each idea calls for a different material or medium. Drawing is often the starting point, but some things need volume, earth, or, on the contrary, to remain very graphic. Combining different practices allows me to keep my work alive, without limiting it to a single form of expression.
What inspires you?
There are many. My work is inspired by personal memories, landscapes and travels, but also by a wide variety of artistic references. Having grown up in Vence, Henri Matisse's presence inevitably influenced my relationship with colour and form. I am also very moved by Edward Hopper's atmospheres and his way of capturing the silence and tension of a place.
More recently, I have developed a real fondness for Etel Adnan, whose work inspires me with its ability to convey landscape and emotion through abstraction that is both stripped down and deeply moving.
There are, of course, many other influences, particularly from music and cinema. They all blend together quite intuitively in my work, like a backdrop that accompanies my research and feeds my imagination.
You have a very colourful and bright palette. How much does your region influence your work?
Enormously. The south has a very special, very bright light, which directly influences my palette. Colours are never decorative for me, they are linked to very concrete sensations: heat, salt, stone, sky... Living in this region has taught me not to be afraid of colour, to embrace it as a language in its own right. It is often the starting point for my compositions.
Does Salty Lands evoke anything in particular for you?
Yes, it's a collection title that immediately appealed to me, having grown up near the sea. Salty Lands evokes for me lands marked by salt, wind, sea spray... This collection was also an opportunity to talk about memories and experiences that still stay with me today.
When we talked about the world of collecting, you mentioned your stay in Australia. Can you tell us more about that?
My trip to Australia was a defining moment. It was my first ‘adult’ trip, and it felt like a real adventure: sleeping in the car, taking each day as it came, travelling through vast landscapes bathed in harsh light. Everything there seemed bigger, more immediate, almost elemental. I rediscovered a very physical relationship with the elements (the wind, the heat, the earth, the horizon) that resonated with my childhood memories of the Mediterranean. These two experiences, though very distant in time and geography, echo each other and have nourished the diversity of motifs in this collection, like two interior landscapes conversing from afar.
Recently, you told us that you came across some faxes that your teacher had sent to your parents during a school trip. Do you have any particular anecdotes about that?
Yes, it was quite funny and at the same time very moving to come across them again. I tend to keep a lot of things related to memorable experiences, and these faxes immediately took me back to that school trip and the atmosphere that accompanied it. They were sent to our parents by a teacher I liked very much when I was in Year 6, during that trip to the Lérins Islands off the coast of Cannes.
He recounted the nights spent in the old monastery, the meals we shared, life on the island and even our first disco :). Rereading them today, I realised how much this experience had marked me: the silence, the humidity, the sound of the sea at night, the dormitory, the treasure hunts on the island... Very precise, almost sensory memories that came back naturally when I was drawing for Salty Lands.
Alizée Cayla
