Mai Khanh Pham To

Brand Experience, Brand Strategy, Brand content, Content strategist, Content Producer, Content production, Strategic planning, Digital communication strategy, Brand Experience, UX Design, HX Design, Experience Design, Art, Copywriting, Curation

In the beginning is painting...

From compositions drawn from natural landscapes of seas, rocks, rivers, and bark, I create large abstract paintings like fluid and meditative journeys. My primary medium is oil paint, whose sensual plasticity and unparalleled transparency I love. Each painting is a work of patience required by the layer-by-layer drying times, a prerequisite for an incessant quest for depth and color vibration. Time is thus a necessity, not only imposed by the oil technique but by the search for a delicate balance between harmony and chaos, fluidity and movement. The viewer is invited to lose themselves in the canvas space where details form landscapes within the landscape. I invoke the elements: Air, Water, Fire, Earth. I mix them, weave them together like the fabric of a sleepless dream. It is in large formats that these compositions unfold with the most power, gaining enough substance to evoke a sense of being lost in immensity. This is what Gaston Bachelard so beautifully calls intimate immensity (in The Poetics of Space).

Recently, writing and poetry have joined painting.

A new creative chapter is opening around the poetic object in all its forms: text, performance, painting, sculpture, embroidery, artist's book.

As director, with an entrepreneurial approach, I established the 4th manufacturing hub in the national Make ICI network.

My role: Promoting the project to key stakeholders in the Lille community (Third places, Artisans, Craftspeople, Makers, Designers, Clients, Trainers, Social and Solidarity Economy), identifying the needs of local artisans, managing the site's layout and equipment, recruiting residents, seeking and finalizing furnishing contracts, and directing these projects, launching training activities.

Ideally located in the heart of the Lille metropolis, ICI Wasquehal, a collaborative and supportive 2300 m2 manufacturing hub, welcomes artisans, artists, designers, architects, set designers, and entrepreneurs in the MAKING sector at the Ateliers de la Maillerie, a former logistics warehouse of the 3 Suisses.

The mission of Make ICI: to promote local and urban craftsmanship and production by offering its residents and community a privileged space for creation, inspiration, knowledge transfer, innovation, collaboration, and production. ICI Wasquehal is part of the national Make ICI network founded by Christine and Nicolas Bard, whose first site, ICI Montreuil, opened in 2012.

Make ICI is the 2020 recipient of the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for the Intelligence of the Hand.