Anaïs Lelièvre

Anaïs Lelièvre is an artist who works at the intersection of ceramics, installation, and drawing, unfolding between meticulous detail and monumental expansion. With a spatial approach to drawing and a strong interest in geology, her creative work has developed through residencies since the end of 2015, both in France and internationally (Iceland, Brazil, Switzerland, Greece, Canada, Portugal).

Lelièvre holds a DNSEP (Diplôme National Supérieur d’Études Professionnelles) in Fine Arts from the École Supérieure d’Art et de Design de Rouen and a doctorate from Université Paris 1. She collaborates with the Capazza Gallery in Nançay, and her studio is based in Aubervilliers.

In 2023, a solo exhibition dedicated entirely to her ceramic works was held at L’Espace Jacques Villeglé in Saint-Gratien, followed by the co-organization of a study day at Paris 1 University titled “Ceramic Approaches: Artists and Accidents” (proceedings published in the Plastik journal). In 2024, she completed two year-long residencies—at the Lyon Observatory and the Ceramics Museum in Lezoux—where she collaborated with geologists, astrophysicists, paleontologists, and archaeologists. The ENSAD School in Limoges also hosted her for the production of a ceramic piece nearly two meters tall.

In 2025, Anaïs Lelièvre presented a solo exhibition at CCCLB La Borne, an installation in the reflecting pool of the Château de Rentilly, and a solo show at Art Paris with Galerie Capazza. She will also show her work in group exhibitions at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris and the Musée Adrien Dubouché in Limoges.

Visit Anaïs Lelièvre’s website and Instagram page.

Anaïs Lelièvre lets herself be permeated by the landscape and by what emanates from the mineral world. She remains receptive to the signs that reveal, as she puts it, that “beneath it, there is at work”. Her sensitivity to nature, and particularly to the hostile environments produced by telluric upheavals, has been sharpened by her frequent travels, especially to Iceland in 2015 and again in 2019. The contrasts between the snow and this island’s basalt blackness, resembling a huge rock of lava, have instilled in her a sensation of losing her bearings and have since inspired her drawings and installations. Beyond this striking optical effect, the power of the subsurface, made tangible on the very surface of the Earth’s crust, focuses the artist’s gaze on the mineral, which she explores through ceramics. Her need for physical contact with geological history has led her to numerous spectacular sites, including the Thaïs cave (Drôme), the Roure and Pouzzolane des Dômes quarries (Puy-de-Dôme), the Aletsch glacier (Switzerland) and the Al-Ula Desert (Saudi Arabia)… and a residency at La Junqueira (Lisbon) offered Anaïs Lelièvre the opportunity to develop work around Terramoto, one of the strongest earthquakes recorded in Europe.
Text by Jean-Charles Hameau, translated from the book Anaïs Lelièvre, Littera/Terra, Arles, Immédiats, 2024.