About

Julia Ratsimandresy

Between the Margins and the Marvellous.

Half Breton, half Malagasy, and wholly Basque by adoption since 1996,
I am one of those artists who finds treasure where others see waste.

For nearly ten years, I have been running arts and crafts workshops for children in nursery and primary schools. It is their offcuts — crumpled papers, forgotten cardboard, scraps of nothing, dyed and torn — that I gather, preserve, and metamorphose into poetic worlds on a small scale : intimate dioramas, and my signature Uni-Verres — those miniature worlds beneath glass domes where time seems to hang suspended.

Collage, cutting, watercolour, mixed-media assemblage : each piece is entirely handmade, a unique work, sustained by an economy of means that is equally an ethics of seeing. My creatures — watchful animals, wry little sprites — do not decorate the world : they question it, gently.
Where do we stand, within nature ? Who truly shares this Earth with us ?

These questions travel lightly, carried by colour and a tender humour, never weighing heavily. I make something precious from nothing. I believe — deeply, joyfully — that beauty is not a luxury but a necessity : a breath to keep us upright, a space in which to recover the curious, unencumbered gaze of the child we have never quite stopped being.

To enchant the everyday, one unique piece at a time. That is my only programme. And it is urgent.