The work of Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves combines light, sculpture and new technologies. Her research focuses on vision, its processes and conditioning. Her immersive installations use a phenomenological approach to reality, they underscore the perception of time as a continuum. Since 2014, the artist’ researches focused on space in relation to astrophysics and to study the natural light cycles.

Key examples of D’Estienne d’Orves’ work include “EXO” : an audiovisual set-up, that projects laser beams onto hundreds of celestial objects and like the head of a disk player reads the sky and translate astrophysical data into a sound composition by Julie Rousse. “Geometry” a kinetic outdoor sculpture created for the Watermans Art Center and London City for the London Olympic Games in 2012.

Her Cosmos series questions the ways in which natural manifestations of light are grasped by mythical as well as instinctive knowledge. Her “Stellar convection” sculpture considers the convection at an excessively slow rate of hydrogen in helium in a red dwarf, “Eclipse” plays with the relativity of positions between the viewer, a light source and distant space-times. In her Supernova piece, designed with the help of a PhD astrophysicist (Fabio Acero) and which stages the explosion of a star in three dimensions.  

In 2017, Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves converted the two EDF chimneys of Le Havre city (705 ft high) into a space beacon. The plant’s two smokestacks exhale in time with Mars and Venus respectively, lighting up at variable intervals adjusted to the ‘light Time’ of the two planets.

Her work has been shown at the Centre Pompidou – Nuit Blanche (Paris) – New Art Space / Sonic Acts (Amsterdam) – Watermans Arts Center (London) – Elektra Festival / BIAN (Montreal) – Maison des Arts of Créteil (Créteil/FR) – Le Centquatre / Nemo International Biennial of Digital Arts (Paris) – OCAT (Shanghai) – ICAS (Dresden) – Aram Art Museum (Goyang /KR) – Luz y Vanguardias (Spain)