Biography

“See the world in a different way”

 

Sarah Valente (born in 1988 in Paris) is a French visual artist.

 

Her quest: to show the invisible, the hidden sides of the world, the little-known aspects of nature as well as the infinite wealth of forests and their inhabitants.

 

She has been working on ultraviolet light since she discovered that insects and few animals perceive the world with the spectrum of Uv light, as a succession of fluorescent signals that allow them to find their way, to eat, and to live.

 

Her work is accompanied by a principle of double reading: we can observe the pieces either with our human vision under the daylight, or with an animal vision with the use of the Uv light, called black light.

 

Her passion for the forest came a long time ago. She grew up on the outskirts of Paris and was raised by an Italian father and French-Ukranian mother.

 

The natural surroundings of her home had quickly become a major source of inspiration for Valente. Her playful meandering and infantile exploration into the forests surrounding her home had soon evolved into a sincere fascination, passion, and will serve to exist as a major engine that drives the artist’s work today.

 

An event that solidified this passion, was the meeting of her maternal grandfather at the age of seven, that will lead to a series of trips and experiences in the jungles of Guadaloupe.

 

Her grandfather had refuged himself among the flora and fauna of the island and had invited Sarah to visit, and to explore with him, this world.

 

Her entrancement with the strength of this world had now dictated a path to be pursued in the arts. The large leaf that becomes an umbrella, the smell of the wet earth underneath her boots after the magic tropical rain.

 

The imposing and unexpected strength of nature and its invisible world, mankind’s interaction and link to jungle, its spiritual implications, and the role that the jungle plays in the evolution of man and who we are today.

 

Valente comments that she often sees a sculptural order in the chaos of the jungle. Her pursuit is to capture this sculptural chaos, perhaps with origins of a parallel and invisible world, spiritually speaking or not, and share this with the viewer.

 

Sarah Valente is currently a resident of POUSH Manifesto in Clichy, Paris, France.

 

She is the current founder of Green Line Foundation, an association that reinvests part of sales revenues into organizations supporting primary forests as well serving as a link between foundations aimed at saving, creating, and sharing knowledge about conservation, preservation, and rehabilitation of forests throughout the globe.