I am a Swiss-French graphic designer and poet based in Amsterdam since 2017. My practice is twofold: I work both independently — using writing as a tool to sharpen and support my ideas, and in collaboration with contemporary artists. My work is the result of experimentation with different media, from print to digital. In particular, I investigate the relationship between language and the body, the intimate and the collective, approaching content with both critical detachment and a degree of identification.
I studied at:
ECAL, Lausanne, CH
Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, NL
Alix Chauvet
Graphic Design & Illustration
Amsterdam, NL
Geneva, CH
contact@alixchauvet.com
@alix.chauvet
Don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Branding, Corporate Identities, Illustrations, Posters & Social Media.
2024:
Menus Plaisirs, Chalet Farb, Caroline Freymond
2023:
Mother's Milk, together with Marie Ilse Bourlanges
2022:
Concrete Reef, Deep Time Agency
Novelle, Le Grand Clos NNN
2021:
Antonia
De Gids, Kroniek & Kritiek
Rademacher / De Vries Architects
Studio Billie van Katwijk / Ventri
2019–2020:
Cultural Matter: JODI
Novelle, Le Grand Clos, Fusion
2017–2020:
Novelle, Le Grand Clos, Iconique
Illustrations, cut-outs
Switzerland, 2024
Illustrations, cut-outs
Switzerland, 2024
Series of 22 illustrations for the 20 years anniversary of Menus Plaisirs / Chalet Farb, a Swiss-based gallery and event space.
Commissioned by Caroline Freymond
format: 25 x 32 cm
technique: digitalised cutouts
publication
Amsterdam, 2023
publication
Amsterdam, 2023
Publication design for Perdu Schrijfworkshop, 2022-23, Stichting Perdu, Amsterdam.
The publication brings together selected short stories, essays and poems from two groups that followed two parallel writing workshops. It gathers two individually designed booklets—TRILLEN & VERDRAGINGEN—in a common cover. The brown part has been designed by Hilde Meeus (Meeus Ontwerpt), while I designed the blue part.
Texts: Alix Chauvet, Zoë Dankert, Loes de Groen, Ivana Kalaš, Sascha Luinenburg, Nima Madjzubi, Maurits Vettewinkel
Begeleiding: Jeroen van Rooij
100 copies, A5, printed in riso at Stichting Kaboem, 2023, Amsterdam.
Available at Perdu bookshop.
Artist book, 348 pages, 15.5 x 24 cm, 400 copies. Hardcover thread sewn binding, offset duotone
Amsterdam, 2023
Artist book, 348 pages, 15.5 x 24 cm, 400 copies. Hardcover thread sewn binding, offset duotone
Amsterdam, 2023
Introduction text by Marta Pagliuca Pellacani
Published by Jap Sam books
Printed at Robstolk Amsterdam
Photos: the book photographer
Mother’s Milk (re)constructs the story of Ilse, the author’s grandmother. Alienated in the psychiatric hospital of La Timone, in Marseille, Ilse resided there from 1952 until her death in 1983. Bringing together archival material, correspondences and conversations narrated via documentary poetry, Marie Ilse Bourlanges assembles the fragments of a family history hiding in plain sight.
An undertow of embodied memory meets the flow of institutional remembrance, drawing parallels between the discarded material of archives and the necessary mechanisms of physiological forgetting. Mother’s Milk offers an intimate journey into madness, intergenerational trauma transmission and the role of artistic research in imagining a possibility of healing.
Read here about Mother's Milk in Metropolis M magazine, a conversation with Liza Prins.
20 pages, 40 x 18 cm, edition of 25. Riso-printed with 3 colors, spiral-bound
Amsterdam, 2023
20 pages, 40 x 18 cm, edition of 25. Riso-printed with 3 colors, spiral-bound
Amsterdam, 2023
Planktos Rising is a riso-printed children book recounting the journey of a plankton named Planktos who meets many inhabitants of the North Sea. Through their conversations, he learns about a mythical material of great influence on their environment: oil. Using colorful and tactile imagery, the book introduces children to the strange relationships between mythology and fossil fuel, making up the basis for universal thinking that is needed to discuss the topic of the climate crisis.
The design is a translation of scenes from the tapestry Fossil Fuel Mnemosyne: Oil & Myth (2022) by Miriam Sentler.
Planktos Rising was launched at Bergen Art Book Fair (April 14-16, 2023, NO).
Text & concept: Miriam Sentler (1994, DE/NL).
Design & illustration: Alix Chauvet (1995, CH/FR).
With the support of Stimuleringsfonds (creative industries fund NL).
Illustration, 10 x 10 cm
Amsterdam, 2021
Illustration, 10 x 10 cm
Amsterdam, 2021
Illustration representing two "K"s for the column Kroniek & Kritiek, from the literary magazine De Gids.
Poster, 59.4 x 84 cm and social media banner
Amsterdam, 2019
Poster, 59.4 x 84 cm and social media banner
Amsterdam, 2019
A poster and social media banners for LIMA (LIving Media Arts, Amsterdam), an important platform for the preservation, research and distribution of media arts. The poster was designed for the event "Cultural Matter: JODI", a conference where the work of the net art duo JODI was discussed in their presence.
Branding, logo and packaging
Amsterdam, 2021
Branding, logo and packaging
Amsterdam, 2021
Two complementary logos made for designer Billie van Katwijk, who specialises in ceramics and cow's stomach leather. The grey and the oval represent metamorphosis and cyclic transformation.
BVK: www.billievankatwijk.com
Ventri: www.ventrileather.com
Illustrations for a series of wine labels, 14 x 6 cm
Satigny, CH, 2017 – 2022
Illustrations for a series of wine labels, 14 x 6 cm
Satigny, CH, 2017 – 2022
A series of hand-drawn animals colored with gouache for the wine labels of a Swiss vineyard.
Novelle: https://novelle.wine
Illustrations for some wine labels, 14 x 6 cm, and poster, 59.4 x 84 cm
Satigny, CH, 2020–2021
Illustrations for some wine labels, 14 x 6 cm, and poster, 59.4 x 84 cm
Satigny, CH, 2020–2021
Some colorful fishes for a collection of wines from Switzerland, hand-drawn and painted with gouache.
Novelle: https://novelle.wine
Books, Illustrations, Installations, Moving images, Posters, Objects, Typefaces.
2023-2024:
Fishes & Birds, linocuts
2022:
Tedious Outside
2020:
Eros until sore
Moiré
Spirit Jewellery Journey
The physicality of written language
2019:
Blue like an orange
Holly Noble Heather Flash Sugar Sherry Whisky
La guerre au Luxembourg
2018:
The Chair, an apparatus
Cracks
2017:
Who needs bees anyway
Poster
Amsterdam, 2022
Poster
Amsterdam, 2022
A poster composed around two anagrams, Tedious and Outside.
Printed and design by myself :), with the help of Q Hisashi Shibata.
Screen-print, 4 layers, 70 x 100 cm, edition of 25.
Get in touch if you would like to get a copy!
Book, unique copy, 29 x 29 cm
Amsterdam, 2019
Book, unique copy, 29 x 29 cm
Amsterdam, 2019
Reedition of La guerre au Luxembourg (1916), the first poem that Blaise Cendrars wrote after his right arm amputation at fight. It depicts children playing war in the “Jardin du Luxembourg”.
I copy Cendrars’ poem with my left hand. My clumsy writing holds the ambiguity on which the text is built: a hilly roughness and a childlike allure. The process feels playful and painful all at once. It gives me more time to feel the load of each word, as they unravel at a slower pace. The basics of communication seem reassessed, estranged. I become aware that being hindered by your body implies a reorganization of the self.
Book, 12 x 17 cm, 700 copies, offset-printed
Amsterdam, 2020
Book, 12 x 17 cm, 700 copies, offset-printed
Amsterdam, 2020
TAkEAwAY is a book written, edited and published by the Rietveld Academie’s graphic design department during the first national lockdown.
In my 32 p. contribution, eros until sore, I approach writing as an erotic act, using the letters of eros as a starting point. I reshuffle, add and subtract letters from this word in all sorts of combinations in the hope of exhausting its meaning, or of generating some new. Following my desire to capture what resists to language, I explore the tensions between speech and the body in an organic collection of diary entries, scores, mythologic references, poetry, and linocut experiments.
Lino prints
Amsterdam, 2023 – 2024
Lino prints
Amsterdam, 2023 – 2024
Series of linocuts. Postcard format (A6)
Limited edition. Contact me if you are interested in purchasing some.
Book, edition of 12, 12.5 x 19 cm
Amsterdam, 2020
Book, edition of 12, 12.5 x 19 cm
Amsterdam, 2020
My essay is a quest for physical traces within written language. This search continuously draws my focus to my own body as I write, so that at times I end up overwhelmed by swarms of impressions that both stifle and enrich my writing process. The trying introspection clears up the question underlying my prime interest: I am indirectly asking if the endeavour of writing liberates or hinders the body.
“Unlike silence, this deadly place in which women have learnt to lock themselves, breath bears life in a motherly way.” (p. 37)
Moving images, 3D animation
Amsterdam & London, 2020
Moving images, 3D animation
Amsterdam & London, 2020
An immersive voyage through the gemology of realities with Chloé Valorso's Spirit Stones. Open your eyes, hearts and gates to Disco Shamanism, charge your crystals and your laptop, join the liminal space.
The soundscape was created in collaboration with Chloé Valorso and Hinako Omori, premiering at NYC Jewelry Week 2020.
Chloé Valorso: iwasborninazoo.com
Hinako Omori: www.hinakoomori.com
NYC Jewelry Week: nycjewelryweek.com
Book, unique copy, 32 x 24.5 cm
Amsterdam, 2019
Book, unique copy, 32 x 24.5 cm
Amsterdam, 2019
The British royal family is portrayed through rings, drinks, gossips, flowers and dogs in this publication. The selection of images is precise: each photograph is carefully cropped, as if zooming in was bringing me closer to these iconic characters. Every detail is a symbol of their rank: even hands manners are patently infused with nobility. The royals resist anonymity. The publication ends up on a spread showing a little girl, the only one whose face can be seen. For she is the only one that does not lie, that can still be in the world instead of appearing in it.
Typeface
Amsterdam, 2018
Typeface
Amsterdam, 2018
Cracks found in Amsterdam’s walls and turned into a font.
"I notice small cracks in the walls of the stairwell of my flat. I take a closer look and realize that some forms strangely evoke letter shapes. I can see an O, an I, an X… All these marks, born from accidents, can be read as typographic signs. My mind starts to instill meaning in these meaningless defects. Language subjugates and distorts my gaze. Walls become the epicenter of communication."