ISABELLE DAËRON b. 1983

LOOKING AT THE INVISIBLE

A woman rises with the sun and works the soil beneath its rays, feeling the wind as she takes a deep breath and drinking water from the river that runs nearby. Even if we do not all live in an environment like this, the sun, wind, and water reach us. They sustain our lives. 

We take these things for granted. Yet because we cannot see or touch them, we tend to forget their importance. We benefit from them. How ironic it is that the more vital something is to our lives, the more difficult it is to remain aware of its existence. If one day these things suddenly vanished, would humans notice? Most likely those who had forgotten would already be gone. 

I feel like it would be crude to ask Isabelle Daëron why she is interested in design related to water. She usually falters I the face of such questions. The vector of her design points toward what is necessary for humans to lives as part of nature. Asking her why would be like asking a thirsty person why they need water.

In addition to creating art, Daëron works with corporations and local governments to design public spaces, bringing new perspectives to everyday issues. She says that design gives us direction. It allows us to rethink things we took for granted and become sensitized to the ripples of change washing over us. Design begins before a shape appears. It is a process of seeking out guideposts within a hazy issue and finding a path toward an invisible destination.

Daëron begins by creating images - not simply in her mind but real drawings. She starts with no foothold and draws the elements that surround an issue. For example, simple things like how rain falling from the sky flows down a mountain, coalesces into a river, and becomes drinking water that fills the cup in a person’s hand. As she researches further, she discovers that things wich at first seemed unrelated are in fact connected. Sometimes she finds that a cycle has been interrupted. She uses that is near at hand to understand the balance of life and natural energy.

Drawing is a way of expressing a world that cannot be fully captured by blueprints. People once drew to make visible what they could not see. For instance, by connecting points of light in the night sky, they created constellations, telling stories that personified the invisible power of nature. In this way, humans came to understand that the world contained more than themselves.

Trough drawing, Isabelle Daëron asks whether human contrivances have perhaps hidden more of nature than they need to. She asks if the connectivity with nature that I necessary to live has perhaps been severed. If it has become difficult for humans to sense the presence of nature, then one thing we can do is to look at the invisible.

Yoshiko Nagai, Materia Prima #3, 2023