Flavio Juan Nunez is a complete and multidisciplinary artist: he is a sculptor, a couturier, a performer, stylist and illustrator. His main inspiration comes from analysing the deepest aspects of existence. He breaks down the barriers that lead to the standardisation of thought, delves into the constraints, leaves space to the unconscious and declines it into art form. For 10 years Flávio Juán has been developing performative and sculptural works stemming from artisanal gestures, from the ritual of body sublimations within a primal relationship to material and votive objects.
He work for and support a lot of artist, performer and designers worldwide during his carreer. He can boast collaboraton with Jean Paul Gaultier, Raf Simons per Christian Dior, Vetements, Lanvin, Viktor&Rolf, Maison Martin Margiela in fashion and with Beyonce, Violet Chachki, Sam Smith, Cho Giseok, Lisa Jarvis.
Flavio Juan Nunez vision is strongly connected with Modem. For this reason we asked him to create the Cover of the Modem Map of the Paris Women's Fashion Week SS 24
He realised for Modem a project that he entitled « Caryatid Column» : an illustrated image who show a photograph manipulated and repainted by hand directly by Flavio Juan Nunez. The image features Flavio wearing an exceptional haute couture piece made of a white lacquered metal mesh draped on a molded leather corset that created it in collaboration with Laurent Tijou . Together, they combined their expertise in jewelry and leather making.
By making it in metal mesh on a sculpted leather body, the piece opens a dialogue between past tradition and present innovation. It refers to the ancient ritual of adorning statues used to celebrate & reclaim their history.
The conversation between the moulage piece and the human body shapes creates new forms of alterity to illustrate the continuous state of passage and transition we all accomplish through matter and time. The "Caryatid Column" is an allegorical figure of continuous otherness.

MODEM INTERVIEWS FLAVIO JUAN NUNEZ
1. Whats your first artistic piece and how it comes to your mind?
What I would consider as my first artistic piece is what I would call today a wearable sculpture.
Back in 2009, while I was graduating from La Cambre in the textile design department, I started to develop the concept of nomadic habitable structures.
These soft sculptures I was creating became through the artisanal intervention portable textile architectures.
After three years of researching, learning and pairing traditional techniques, I developed a grand textile piece combining all my knowledge at the time.
Once worn it could be compared to a traditional geometric minimalist garment. Once placed on the ground it would became a giant ornemental abstract sculpture in which one could shelter and live inside. All the material that is was made of were upcycled from memorial fragments of my own history.
It was made of felted fabrics from clothes and embroidered with elements of adornments belonging to the women of my family. Beyond the technical innovations of the piece deeper aspects were at stakes.
Descending from several immigrations and born of different cultures, the fusion of craftsmanships, the transmission of heritages and the transition between identities have always been what defines me and therefore my work. Without ever feeling settled or belonging to only one place, I have always sought to understand the notion of appartenance and to redefine what home could be. Through this first piece, I experienced for the first time the feeling of belonging to a whole somewhere everywhere.
2. When did you realize that your talent in art is the future of your life?
As far as I can remember, I always wanted to sublimate things. I feel it as an instinct. It is about the need of cherishing beauty and magnifying what at first sight moved me, like a sensory transcription of an intense emotional experience. Research and technical innovations provide ever more developed tools to refine my vocabulary and tend towards a unique personal language (symbolic, formal, conceptual and sensitive). It's like a continuous rite of passage that keeps getting clearer and stronger over time. I felt it as a vital necessity during my studies and it has only amplified since. As everyone has to do this daily job of accompanying their emotions, for me it is inevitable to give them a shape to transform them and play along to become otherness in order to question. This process is always accompanied by the excitement of welcoming the next one and discovering what forms it will take. It became over time a deep fulfilling exercise.
The confirmation of having reached a certain whole is made when my retranscription resonates with someone. The shapes I created allow them to find correspondance within themselves. It no longer belongs to me, it has become something else: a common sensitive whole of alterity.
3. does it mean for you to be an artist?
More than a vocation or a fantasized career, for me being an artist means a constant process of rebirth. I collect all my past forms which feed my instinct as a collector yet I am constantly changing to transform each time into new shapes. It is an eternal transitory state into matter never taking anything discovered previously for granted. It involves deep intellectual and conceptual work as well as strong training in physicality. Preserving the essence while constantly reshaping. I think there is also an inherent responsibility to question the permanence of things to materialize new experimental forms that open up the sensory exploratory field.
4. In which form of your art do you feel more free to express your deepest self?
My most developed sense is touch. I deeply sense with my hands. Creating volumes, reshaping forms, transforming matter is what is most fundamental to me. Handwork is the essence of my approach. It can take plural forms; when I create ephemeral clay volumes on my body through performances or when I shape high-end material into sculptures that can be worn.
There are different levels of manual sensitivities. More primary work with raw materials allows me to express myself just as much as extremely precise work on complex haute couture pieces. Both are important in helping to create a range of sensory nuances to expand all the range of my sensitivity. Exploring these correspondences allows me to create bridges between functional object and memorabilia, sculpture and fashion, tradition and innovation, craftsmanship and performance.
Therefore the artform that allows me to express my deepest self are these hybrid mediums which question the transversality between fields of creation rather than one in particular. They all have in common the physicality of the body initiated by a conceptual reflexive process.
5. What do you see in your future?
Since a few years now, I worked on special collaborations with choreographers and dancers for costumes and scenography. I would like to continue this dynamic to expand ever more and open new artistic conversations. What I cherish the most in my work is the creative and emotional intimacy that is created between two minds; whether it is the relationship with the body with a couture client or the meeting of two creative visions with another artiste.
I want to further develop hybrid medium pieces: bridging craftsmanship to performance to video, linking jewelry to sculpture to the environment. These are things that I started to introduce in my « landscape photo performance » works, where I create sculptures that I wear and perform in nature.
I also plan to further develop more exceptional sculpted pieces on a scale of a collection by creating exclusive customs as I have done until now.
I would also like to continue to exhibit my work in large spaces such as museums and galleries to a larger audience so that what I create always becomes other for the beholder.
