christian havet

MULTIDISCIPLINARY VISUAL ARTIST

christian havet

manifesto

manifesto manifesto

"OCTOBER 2026 – I seek to make visible what connects us."
My work stems from a focus on the living world—its structures, its movements, and the invisible forces flowing through it. It does not aim to represent nature as it appears, but rather to explore what circulates beneath the forms: networks, transformations, and interdependencies. Trained as an architect, I spent a long time observing how forms organize, construct themselves, and inhabit space. Gradually, my focus shifted from architecture to the living world. From built structures to organic ones, a single question runs through my journey: how do forms relate to one another?
Drawing has become a primary realm for this exploration. Lines branch out, proliferate, repeat, or vanish. They may evoke a cell, a leaf, a landscape, an organism, or an imaginary map. I deliberately cultivate this ambiguity, blurring scales and the boundaries between abstraction and observation. My practice is built upon a dialogue between gesture, intuition, and observation. It draws from nature, architecture, and science, as well as from a more intuitive perception of the world. Drawings, paintings, installations, and interventions thus become various expressions of the same quest: to understand the relationships uniting the forms of life. More than a mere representation of the natural world, my work offers an experience of connection. It invites us to shift our gaze and perceive the correspondences, flows, and forces traversing what we once thought separate. For me, art is not limited to producing images or objects. The artwork is an experience capable of shifting our perception. It opens up a space where the visible dialogues with the invisible, and matter with... ...energy, and the individual in relation to their surroundings. My work thus invites us to view what we thought we knew in a new light, to perceive the connections underlying forms, and to consider transformation not as a rupture, but as an essential condition of life. Observing the living world thus becomes a way of questioning our own relationship with the world."

christian havet

AN ENCOUNTER WITH OTHERNESS

assistant

JIM is an eleven-year-old, hand-raised African grey parrot who assiduously follows Picasso's motto: "Every act of creation begins with an act of destruction." I met this character through an organization that helps parrots in distress. The pet trade raises major ethical and environmental questions. His previous life was complicated, with the trauma of abandonment. I decided to welcome him as he was: a semi-tame creature, sad but curious, gregarious and solitary, shaped by centuries of domestication, commercialism, and colonial history—as we all are, more or less.

De/Re/Constructive Art
As we freely share the same living and working spaces, our territories have become closely intertwined. Jim places divergent thinking at the heart of our daily lives. He also spontaneously intervenes in the creative process, which often begins with the de/re/construction of our habits, our beliefs... and our tools! Jim is a model for living in the present moment with vibrant sensitivity. His constant attention encourages me to sharpen my senses and suspend judgment to fully welcome what comes into existence. We are now at the heart of a process of mutual domestication. From our intense cohabitation was born the intention to integrate him into the creative process. It has become customary to respectfully allow as many sensibilities and singularities as possible to express themselves in projects and to co-create with and for a variety of living organisms.
"Art never ceases to be haunted by the animal." Deleuze & Guattari
Didn't India, a pioneer, legally recognize dolphins as "non-human persons" in 2013? It is urgent for us humans to respectfully access other consciousnesses of the more-than-human worlds, and now to welcome those of our brothers and sisters in the stars !

assistant

Studio and home, La Manufacture des Arts, 17 chemin des vivandes, Nyons (F)

language