photo by Linfeng Li photography
Rim Jarbouai is a mixed media artist from France who graduated from University of the Arts London and Duperré school of Art in Paris.
Her art career began with a series of large scale textile artworks commissioned by Starbucks Reserve in China, combining techniques she gathered during her 18 years as a fashion and textile designer.
Her current body of work focuses on watercolor and black ink drawings on paper
to reference and deconstruct urban and natural landscape elements, with forms and patterns derived from her observation of her environment.
Her work is influenced by the graphic stylization of East Asian and North African decorative arts, as well as European botanical drawings.
She has exhibited at the Museum of Traditional Fine Arts and at Xintiandi Plaza in Shanghai, China.
Rim is currently a traveling artist. She is also the host of The Empowered Sensitive and Creative Podcast and the founder of The Empowered Sensitive and Creative Retreats.
I have always been captivated by decorative arts from different cultures, a fascination that continues on in my work.
This interest in this cultural heritage started as a way for me to reflect on my multicultural upbringing across the globe, but it eventually expanded to the exploration of the overarching concept of “diversity” and what it signifies to me now.
As a bicultural human, who has lived in three continents, the question of contrasts and multiplicity profoundly affected me, guiding me to create drawings that invite us to explore imaginary landscapes, orchestrating a multitude of black graphic pattern-like detailing on backdrops of colorful abstractions.
Through rhythmical repetition of patterns in movement, I playfully create harmony from chaos.
I look into our planet and human nature with reverence, awe and an insatiable curiosity. Through my work, I also explore the interconnection between the wisdom of nature and the wisdom of our emotions. Both very diverse.
Thus, these dream-like and mysterious landscapes become the topography of our inner world, flowing on paper.
