Olivia d’Aboville returns to her roots

After years of impressive large-scale projects and laudable international collaborations, Olivia d’Aboville deliberately decelerated to a smaller, quieter register. Her 15th solo exhibition at Leon Gallery brought together textile pieces less as statements and more akin to spaces to linger in — pleated surfaces to recall serene landscapes, and modest circles as celestial bodies. The mood, shaped by a desire to return to the essentials, was restrained, almost meditative.

D’Aboville, a Filipino-French textile artist and designer based in Manila, trained at the renowned ESAA Duperré in Paris. Her practice has always shifted between the organic and the synthetic, between inherited craft and contemporary experiment.

She engages with natural Philippine fibers such as abaca, raffia and silk — often alongside recycled or up-cycled materials — conveying environmental concerns into the technical language of design and sculpture.

Since 2015, she has successfully incorporated contemporary handwoven textiles into her collections, collaborating with local weaving communities to integrate her pieces with tradition and culture.

Her innovative installations have appeared in prestigious galleries, famous museums, and well-attended public festivals across Asia, United States and Europe.

Her obras have found homes in residences, hotels and architectural interiors. The dual life — between art and design, between gallery and everyday space — shaped the discipline of her forms.

In her latest Under the Same Moon, which ran from 7 to 21 February, D’Aboville returned to her roots. The exhibition notes affirmed of a comeback to her minimalist aesthetic, where pleated textiles transformed into terrain and abstraction developed into refuge.

Circles punctuated the compositions similar to celestial markers — the sun and moon — and functioned as anchors within the field of fabric. These configurations introduced a gentle mold — almost childlike in its simplicity. It nodded to indigenous visual languages and to the strength of elementary signs. In a time marked by collective unease and unfortunate war, devastation and displacement, d’Aboville chose restraint as a means to make peace visible.

Several pieces translated these impulses into specific emotions. Pink Sky White Moon and Night Sky — embroidered on canvas with handwoven raffia, abaca, and spun polyester —suggested horizons at rest.

The Mini Fleur series, produced with metalworks by Industria Edition, turned flowers into objects of balance, their raffia and polyester petals poised between delicacy and structure. The larger Fleurs extended this vocabulary, as it allowed scale and repetition to create a sensation of slow bloom.

Across these artworks, pleats and folds acted as ridges and valleys, while circles mapped an inner geography.

Admired altogether, the objets d’art traced a cycle: from movement to stillness, from complexity to clarity. By stripping back to the basics of form and color, rhythm and motion, the artist offered a sanctuary to find solace — without turning away the weight of the world. Under the Same Moon became both retreat and resurgence — a kind reminder that even in unrest, there is forever a shared sky.

¡Enhorabuena, Olivia d’Aboville!