Pascal Monteil is an artist, who reveals life journeys embroidered on tapestry, just as if painted on canvas. In order to widen his own worldview boundaries, he started a journey at the beginning of his career.

Since then, he has never stopped searching for new routes and today, wherever he goes, he even takes his work with him to render a touch of the local vibe. While intuitively following the story that Asia unfolded for him, he ended up finding his own path. We talk with Pascal about the power of transformation and the weight of change. It is incredible how much we find once we accept to get lost, open to others and give free rein to our imagination.

If you come to Pascal’s for a cup of coffee in the middle of the day, you will most probably find him dressed in Indian kurta, comfortably fixed in his armchair and half-drowned in the piles of colourful wool yarns. The noisy and fast-paced city life is left outside the window for a little while.

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Tell me how your journey began. You finished your art studies in France, and left your home country to travel the world. How did you come up with this idea? What were you looking for?

The reason is simple. I went to three very contemporary art schools. After my studies, I lived in Paris where I started doing some exhibitions. Soon I realized that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the vision of my own work, but also with the society. It seemed to me that in France, at that point of time, the vision of art was quite restrictive and poor. I decided to leave. I needed to see myself from a different point of view, to see the world and to compare my research.

I left Paris and took the road for Istanbul, which for me was sort of a gateway to Asia. Later on, I went to show my work in India and stayed there for quite a while. This is where I transformed all of my perspectives. It later led me to other places like Japan, Iran, Bangladesh or Cambodia, to mention but a few.

Indeed, you lived in so many different countries. Do you feel you belong to a certain culture? What effect each place has had on you as a person and on your work?

It was complicated at the beginning when I had to move back and forth between Asia and France. Returning to France used to always be hard because I would try to preserve things I’d felt there and that in Paris seemed to be quite impossible.

Then, one fine day, everything has changed as if by a miracle. It usually happens when you keep working on something for long enough. All of a sudden, I felt I had a sort of oriental man inside of me and this oriental man could actually live and work anywhere, whether it’s in France or elsewhere. I’m not saying I am oriental though. However, I think I live in a mental space, which is extremely oriental. All my inspiration really comes from Indian philosophy, Turkish painting, Iranian and Jewish poetry, and so on. It means that today I am able to live this cultural plurality in a full harmony no matter where I am. I guess I have it with me now because I’ve forged enough links between Eastern and Western cultures. It has indeed completely transformed the way I am, work or think. I learned stuff out of curiosity but it has affected everything in my life – even my perception of time and the way I walk – I learned to never be in a hurry again.

Your artwork guides us through spiritual journeys that unfold very precise characters and architectural elements. What is the essence of your work?

I hope to discover the essence of my work one day. For now, I know what gives me energy and what I really want to do. I’ve spent a lot of time visiting places, be it houses of artists, poets or painters, temples or churches, various roads or landscapes. Each time I immerse myself in those places, in readings, in history, in stories of people. I try to understand the mood of a given era and reveal all its layers and figures. I look for what is invisible and try to restore it. I make links with poetic, ancient and contemporary figures, my own memories. Then, I make those figures travel and connect in different historical moments or stories. In other words, I do unfold precise stories in my work but without constraining them in time or space. In fact, my work is like a huge kaleidoscope of references, memories, associations, mysticism and eroticism.

Throughout your artistic career, you have tried many different creation techniques, each of them are very unique. What motivates you to change each time? Are you looking for a perfect self-expression or are you rather driven by curiosity and thirst for new things?

Yes, techniques are very important for me, and always related to a given moment and need. For instance, when I was 20, there were no digital technologies yet so I was working with a very old printmaking technique. Later on, when modern technologies started to pave the way to our lives, I got interested to see how we could use them to create paintings and poetic images. I wanted to find ways to give these tools more meaning and poetry. I was hooked on this search because technologies were still a novelty.

Then finally, after almost 15 years of using digital technology to create art, I realized that it has taken on huge importance and became omnipresent in our society. I suddenly lost my passion for novelty and found myself craving for exactly the opposite. My whole desire was to slow down time. I was then looking for a fragile, very old and, above all, extremely simple technique. It came to me while looking at men in Iran restoring rugs over long and slow hours, which seemed to me like a sort of meditation. That’s how I ended up adapting some of the most archaic tools - a needle, a chamber cloth and a few bits of wool yarn. This time, I wanted to find ways to express something poetic with such a simple tool.

I have to admit that spending long hours embroidering tapestry to only progress a tiny bit at each time forced me to adapt to a much slower pace of life. This daily slowness has really influenced my lifestyle – the way I read, walk, observe or smell things, and so on. I could not be in a rush anymore. And this was my real desire. Besides, being a nomadic technique, it totally corresponds to me being on the road all the time.

You are a well-known artist. What does it mean to you as a creator to have your works being exhibited in galleries all over the world and sold for private collections?

I have a short and simple answer. First, it gives me the freedom to continue to work and live as an artist. It is super important for me to be able to live poetically. Second, I can introduce my work to other people. Exhibitions are not something I pursue as such, but I truly appreciate the possibility to share my worldview through my work with others. And of course, it makes me incredibly happy when museums like the Indian National Museum or The Castle of Tarascon recognize me as an artist. It is a huge reward for me.

Was it always easy? What was the toughest challenge?

It was easy as a child and teenager because my parents always supported my choices. They were very happy about my choice to pursue an artistic career and, I think, having this moral support made it easier for me to follow the path I wanted. After studies, it became a lot more difficult because I needed to find my own way in the art world. I showed my work a lot when I was young. At that time, it helped me gain some recognition and, most importantly, self-confidence to continue. But it wasn’t always easy. I wouldn’t say I had a steady career evolution, it was rather a roller coaster all the time. There were moments of success but then there were also dips and times when I had to start all over again. The most difficult thing was to keep the endurance and not get discouraged in the times when it was down.

Independent work and especially artistic is often perceived as quite unstable financially. Nobody likes to talk about money, yet it provides us freedom and safety. What is your relationship with money? When was the first time you sold a piece of your artwork? Have you had moments in life when you struggled?

I’ve always got to sell my work a little bit, but it wasn’t always enough to live off. To complete, I would teach art and architecture in France, but also in India and Bangladesh. The really difficult times used to be the moments of moving from one place to another. Coming back to Paris after staying in Asia for long periods used to be extremely hard financially, because I would suddenly lose all my relationships and often need to start everything from scratch. These were moments of emptiness, each time I had to find new sources of work.

When it comes to my relationship with money, I would say it gives me the luxury to live with a certain art of living. And the absolute luxury, for me, is to live in a poetic way, in peace and calm so to have time to contemplate, read and reflect.

You’ve been living in Paris for the past 10 years but always said that your heart belongs elsewhere. Recently you’ve just packed your stuff and moved to a small and super charming town in the south of France. Why did you move?

Until my thirties, I loved getting lost in huge Asian cities like Hong Kong, Bombay, Calcutta or Teheran. Strangely, when I returned to Paris, I couldn’t find that pleasure of living again. I always found Paris a complicated city to live in, but during recent years, it became just too hard to do my imaginary work there. It’s the place where I saw the most brutality and aggression, and I felt that I wasn’t able to protect myself from that outside brutality anymore, it made me lose my focus and calm. So I decided to leave Paris once again.

It wasn’t easy to find a new place because this time I’ve set myself clear priorities. I wasn’t solely looking for calm. What matters the most for me today is the hidden beauty of historical and cultural richness. This is exactly what inspires me in Arles every day. Being here, I do not have the impression of only living in Arles; I feel like also living in Istanbul, Italy, Jerusalem or Spain. By moving here, I was able to find my sources again.

Seems that moving to this new environment replenished you with a new energy and spark. You have immediately made new heights with a local exposition for your most recent works. Tell me more about this.

I am thinking of two things. First, when I arrived in Arles, I was lucky to come across the Régala gallery that helped me a lot. In the midst of the pandemic, with most of the exhibitions cancelled, there was this one with which we vibed immediately. We decided right away to set the exhibition, which allowed me to meet and share my work with many people. It brought me this kind of extraordinary energy.

The other source of energy I’m thinking of is the one I used to waste in Paris to defend myself against the roughness of the outside world. I no longer need that and it seems that I suddenly have a lot more energy to imagine, to think, to work. I finally feel in harmony between my imagination and my real life.

When your work is your passion and your hobby, it might be difficult to count hours and separate work from time to rest. How do you find balance?

I can’t find balance. I make no separation between my work and leisure. However, everything is linked in total harmony for me. In fact, I work all the time but I don't really consider it to be working. It’s not something I forced though.

So what does your day look like? Do you have a routine?

I do have a routine. I usually start my day with a walk, be it in nature, by the sea or in a local street market. Then, I spend the rest of the morning answering my emails. I start working again at 2 p.m. in the afternoon and continue until around 2 a.m. I often work while listening to various shows, interviews or podcasts. On weekends, I wean myself off social media and emails, but I continue working on the same rhythm. I do stop for reading or hanging out with people though. However, I’d say my work is my absolute pleasure and I don’t feel like needing to switch off completely.

What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned through your career and adventurous life?

What I value the most is the openness to others, humility and flexibility. I never spoke well foreign languages, so I learned to open myself to people and to totally guide myself by what I see and feel in their eyes. It is truly powerful. I've met so many different people on my way and been always guided by trying to look at them, whether it be a simple peasant at the Ganges Delta in Bangladesh, a taxi driver in Teheran or great artists in France like Andrée Putman, Marguerite Duras or Christian Lacroix. Figures who interested me the most are the ones who always kept a connection to the poetry of childhood. They inspired and guided me in my way of living without being afraid to give free rein to the imagination.

Lastly, what advice would you give to someone who wants to follow an artistic career?

It just so happens that I give advice all the time because I give lessons to young students who want to become artists. I always highlight the importance of allowing yourself as much freedom as possible at the imaginary level. In order to foster your imagination and live in a free, poetic way, one can’t be in confrontation, but on the contrary – you have to open up to the outside world. I really love the quote by Marguerite Duras, "give me an indication to get lost". We find ourselves, and plenty of things, as soon as we accept to get lost. Lastly, laugh and don’t take yourself too seriously. This is very important because many brakes are often linked to taking ourselves too seriously.