French artist Hyber wants Filipinos to play with his artwork

French installation artist Fabrice Hyber wants Filipinos to play and experience his art, currently being exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

The bespectacled and lightly-framed Hyber was born in Luçon, France in 1961 and went to study art in Nantes, historically a part of Brittany but now considered the center and capital of the northwestern French region of Pays de la Loire.

Nantes has the good reputation of being one of the “most desirable places to live in France, especially for the young professional who enjoys the arts but doesn’t want to live in Paris.”

In a free-wheeling interview at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Hyber, who is visiting Manila for the first time, said he feels like he is in Mexico.

“The summer heat and a lot of things in Manila remind me of Mexico. Manila is a mix of chaotic, a mix of abstract and expressionism. Strange, but I remember now the time when I first did a show in Guadalajara in 1999,” said Hyber, who has been exhibiting internationally for more than 25 years already.

Hyber is famous globally for his “Prototypes d’Objets en Fonctionnement” (object prototypes in operation), which he started crafting in 1991. Over the years, he has mounted 150 “Prototypes d’Objets en Fonctionnement” (POF).

The MAC/VAL Museum, situated near Paris, presented from Oct. 20, 2012 to Jan. 20, 2013 Hyber’s complete collection of POF created between 1991 and 2012.

Hyber’s POF creations have been described as ‘providing the opportunity for visitors to manipulate works of art and put themselves at the heart of the exhibition.”

Hyber won the Golden Lion award for France at the 1997 Venice Biennale for his piece: a pavilion which metamorphosed into a permanent television studio.

Declaring that he did “not want to be just an artist of sculpture,” Hyber said he is eager to show Filipinos and his international audience what he does in his studio in France.

“I am not sure how Filipinos will react to my pieces. Normally, children interact with my works. Parents will always say you cannot touch them, but children do the opposite in my previous exhibits,” Hyber said.


“I want to show that others can also do what I do with my art pieces. I want to show that art offers a lot of possibilities and directions. And to give possibilities to other people is to explore art,” Hyber said.

Hyber told journalists surrounding him: “You can re-arrange my art pieces.”

One playful writer asked if they were allowed to take home some of his art pieces. Hyber laughed loudly and blurted out: “Stealing art is like putting one art piece into another place. I change my art installations from country to country because we do not have the same materials in different countries.”

In the future, Hyber said he wants to create an art installation in the Philippines “related to agriculture, to food, to trees, and to the many islands of the Philippines.”

The French installation artist said he started exploring interactive art and POF in 1991 because of his advocacy to “show another way to create art.”

“One does not only look at art, but one can use all his senses, especially the sense of touch, to appreciate and experience art,” he said.

“When I go to museums in the West, there are a lot of art pieces that I cannot touch. But sometimes I touch the paintings of my other artist-friends. This is very important for me. But you cannot do that in a formal museum,” Hyber said.

When ointedly asked to define the POF which made him internationally famous, Hyber said: “POF is something like a way of thinking, a behavior, a way of life.”

“POF is a possibility to invent your own attitude. It is not a mere design piece. It is the opposite. It has no function. You can invent it. For example, I see something very bad in my studio, I try to recreate it. I put something into it,” he said. — VC, GMA News

Fabrice Hyber's work is on display as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila's "Brave New Worlds: My Utopia in Your Dystopia" exhibition, on display until June 12.