Aude Franjou

Textile Sculptor

Graduated in art history, Aude Franjou trained in tapestry at the Duperré School of Applied Arts. Since then, she has sought to replicate the principles of plant structure through her chosen material. Curves, roots, vines, or coral are the foundations of her inspiration. From tapestry, Aude Franjou has retained only the gesture. Gradually, the need to create in volume became essential.

It was the desire for repetition that led her work toward modular composition—a single starting point, a single form that unfolds endlessly, animated by its own principles of replication and evolution. The choice of thread as a medium was decisive. Today, it is linen that Aude Franjou has chosen to use in her creations, due to its formal versatility. The sculptures she creates are born from wrapping raw flax fibers with thread spun from the same material. The linen thread encircles each parcel of fiber a hundred times. The tension produced by the thread holds the fibers together and creates a petrified material. Color is the final touch. It arrives as a revelation of volume, like a signature.

The strength of Aude Franjou’s work lies in embodying a living principle—a slow, silent, yet powerful and inevitable growth, the triumph of living matter over the inert. This is why she likes to exhibit her sculptures in both urban and natural environments.

“Coraux de la Liberté” exhibition

On the occasion of Paris Design Week 2025, maison parisienne gallery presents “Coraux de la Liberté”, a monumental installation by textile artist Aude Franjou, within the Colonne de Juillet, a national monument located on the Place de la Bastille. Visible from September 3 to 13, the work takes over the interior space of the rotunda, rising up to the heart of the monument’s metal structure.

Made entirely of flax fibre, the installation is composed of hundreds of coral branches that emerge from the vaults and extend to the top. A chromatic gradation guides the eye, from the immaculate white of the devitalized corals to a deep red, embodying their regeneration. This transition symbolizes death and rebirth, in a powerful metaphor of resilience.

Aude Franjou’s work is rooted in research into living things, their slow growth and capacity for rebirth. She sculpts textiles with a gesture inherited from tapestry, using raw linen in tension to create petrified organic forms. Through color, she reveals volume, a sign of life. Coraux de la Liberté is part of a recent cycle by the artist devoted to corals, initiated with the work “2°C”.

“Coraux de la Liberté”, like an immersive reef, pays tribute to the history of the Colonne de Juillet, an emblematic monument under the aegis of the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN). Initially designed to house a monumental fountain celebrating the arrival of water in Paris, this site steeped in memory now sees another form of flow: that of creation, of living matter, of a freedom celebrated in the slow elevation of a craft gesture.