AnoufaBears Creator Ylan Anoufa Interviewed by Magda Siewierska
You are one of the best young designers in the world. You grew up in the tradition of one of the oldest fashion houses in France of your grand-father. You’ve been showing us your next artistic emanation for some time now. You reveal yourself as a creator of modern art, and your works can be admired on the streets of cities around the world. You are the creator of a geometric sculpture in shape close to the teddy bear toy. Why bears and why in this form?
Y- I remember that the first thing I got in my life was a teddy bear. I always wanted to have my own teddy bear, which would be my confidant and friend. I think we’ve all had dreams like that at some point in our lives. This is what makes us so much similar to each other. For a child, a teddy bear is a symbol of changing the nearest world to a better, more trust-able and friendly one. As a mature man and artist, I would like to remind people of these emotions and start changing the world for the better, because if you look at it now, it is unfortunately quite nasty.
M- So the teddy bear is a personal symbol for you?
Y- This is a symbol of happiness and self-confidence. When you’re a child, you say, “Protect me, bear, help me, come with me, with you, bear, I’m not afraid of the dark.” My bears help me face the world and I want to share it with others.
M- So this is your message. Do you want to protect people this way, the world?
Y- Yes. And I do it because today’s world is a pursuit and constantly facing the challenges of being better and better in various areas of life. We take on more and more responsibilities, we set high standards for each other. In addition, there are certain compulsions that affect all people: finding a job, supporting yourself and your family in a difficult economic situation. We turn into machines that carry out subsequent tasks. And I want to remind that in life you have to be human first and foremost. This is our most important vocation, that’s why I created the Art Gang Foundation, with which we travel to schools, orphanages and hospitals and conduct art workshops with children, we distribute small artist sets to everyone. The set includes a small teddy bear sculpture from clay as well as paints and brushes. For a moment, the child will feel like a real artist. It is important to me to help children to develop through art education. Art and teddy bears are supposed to lead them to a happy and successful life.
M- You think the world is so tired that it doesn’t want to show its emotions anymore?
Y-I’ll put it this way. You grow up and go to work. You go into big business and become one of its faceless cogs. Then you forget what is really important in life because you forget what laughter is. You have to show the world a serious face to be taken seriously. So you accept certain rules of the game imposed from the outside. Now you are a businessman. You are absorbed by the system you live in. Money starts to count, but somewhere in it all you lose the joy of life. It’s happening everywhere in the world and it even has the official name “businessman blues”. It can be translated as “businessman’s depression.” So maybe it’s better to tell yourself now and stop once and for all! And stop living and seeing the world as these blind, selfish, system-changed people. “Money, money, money.” Life is not only money! Life is the joy of simple things, but also other values such as sharing knowledge and experience with the next generations. We should do this so that those who come after us don’t make the same mistakes we did. I am thinking here, for example, of littering and poisoning our planet. What will we leave behind for the next generations? Nothing? That’s why I invented teddy bears and I want to give them to people to remind them of all this. If you look closely, my teddy bears are covered with graphics. So everyone is also a carrier of content that I want to pass on. See, these are stories about trusting yourself, building a happy life, stopping being afraid and remembering to become the best for yourself.
M- Could you tell me at least one story you painted on one of your works? In fact, it looks like an action-packed, colorful comic book.
Y-Because in a way it’s a comic book. I create history and want to share them as much as my art. If you look closely, all the graphics on the teddy bears connect, each tiny fragment results from another and influences the next one. All of them are a system of situations you have to go through as you go through life. It’s like the system of life: you have to earn money but also make time for love.
M- I’ll change the subject for a moment. I heard that you are opening your own art galleries?
Y- Yes, we recently opened a new gallery in Marbella, Spain at Hotel51 in Puerto Banos under the name AnoufaBear. In front of the gallery I put two large teddy bears over 2m, and in the gallery itself I present small teddy bears, paintings and items such as motorcycle helmets painted with my graphics, candles. This summer, however, I intend to enrich the gallery’s offer with new standing bears and new items. I will also have a surprise, I am working on it now
M- What’s the surprise?
Y – At the moment, in my art atelier which I called “AnoufaLand“, I am creating the first standing Teddy bear. The sculpture is 3 m 60 cm high and is holding a surfboard in his hands. This is the first standing bear and it will be standing right in front of my art gallery in Marbella, actually on the roundabout at the entrance to the Hotel. I have been creating bears for 8 years, so far they were all sitting, I only changed the material and colors, now the bears will be standing and each will play a different character. A standing shape gives me many creative possibilities, you can really do anything with it. Standing bears will be created in a limited series, no more than 12 bears will be created – from one character.
M. We are seeing more and more giant “AnoufaBear” around the world. Where exactly can we see them? Who is the recipient of such big sculptures?
Y- Bears are in many cities in Europe and Asia. Most often, bears are bought by hotels and restaurants, but more and more often I work with cultural facilities, museums and mayor’s offices. A large bear, over 5 meters high, as you know, is located in Warsaw’s Praga Północ in Park Praski in front of the Zoo,I collaborated on this project with the Praga-Północ Commune Office in Warsaw. In June this year, a 5-meter teddy bear will stand in Nice it was ordered by the local mayor’s office, another three giant bear sculptures are currently being created for Spain, and one for Mexico. I’m talking about the next big teddy bears. I not only deliver the sculpture, as you know, on the day of the inauguration – I organize A Bear Day for visiting families. Children and adults participate in art workshops, play bear games and we organize with my team a bear cocktail in the evening. I create the whole event in cooperation with the host. We know in advance who will come and we create the event- custom for the visitor. One of the tasks during such an event is to take a picture with the teddy bear and publish the photo with appropriate ‘hashtags’ on social media and you know what, my teddy bear is probably the one that gets the most selfies. People take pictures with my teddy bear all the time. I laugh that when I sleep in the other side of the world, my teddy bear works, works for love. As you know I have some big bears in Asia, in cities like Hong Kong or Macau and I can see by tagging my profile how popular my ‘AnoufaBear’ is.
M- Tell me about your Art Gang Foundation, how do you work with it? Does the teddy bear also appear in the Foundation?
Every time I sell my teddy bear, I donate part of the proceeds to the Foundation I created – Art Gang. The goal of the Foundation is to organize art workshops and distribute kits for young artists. The set includes a small bear sculpture from clay, paints, brushes and instructions – how to mix colors to create a new palette. We go with the Foundation to schools, orphanages. We were also supposed to visit children’s hospital, but Covid started and unfortunately it made our activities difficult. I want to tell the children something, to give them something. First of all, art allows you to release emotions, it is a kind of therapy for children. I am asking young people to paint their dreams on a teddy bear, tell a story… First, children paint their project on a piece of paper, then they mix colors and then finally they paint the sculpture. Participants for a moment feel like real artists, they feel that they can be who they want to be, that they can make their dreams come true. I can talk about the Foundation and children all the time, I really like those workshops.
M- Many artists are self-centered, you are generous.
Y-No, it’s not like that. It’s not about being generous, it’s about investing in a project that is very important to me and in which I believe. I have the privilege that my work is art. Others have to get up every day at dawn to work, which is not always pleasant. I want to give these people something back. Not only them. I want to do concrete things to improve the world through my Foundation. I’m sorry but I don’t believe in current institutions. They don’t work as I would like. First of all, they are not very efficient. Most of it is corrupt. I finance and supervise my Foundation myself.
I want to change the world for the better, of course on my level and with future generations in mind. I want to do this by making children aware and teach them to believe in themselves. I want them to understand that changes come from themselves, that everyone has the strength and potential to do it every day. If we can reach the minds of children and teach them to think this way, the world one day, everything we assume will become a reality. You just have to take the first step. If you have a plan, you will easily go from point A to point B. Of course, all depends on how do you implement this plan. If you don’t follow the plan, you’ll never get to point B.
M- In that case, the “Bear” project and the Foundation are more than art. It looks like a coherent philosophy.
Y- I can honestly say yes. This is my new philosophy of impact on the world. When we are little, we put all our fears, hopes and emotions into our teddy bears. They are our first confidants, they give us strength, and sometimes they have to protect us from the world because there is no one to do it. Now I want my teddy bears to resemble all this and give all this positive energy to adults and children. So when people around us are doing bad things, we can try to reach them and change them through the AnoufaBear symbol.
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