Teva Victor (born September 30, 1971, Bora Bora) is a French sculptor living in Punaauia, on the island of Tahiti in French Polynesia, France. He is the son of famous French explorer Paul-Emile Victor.[1]
Victor grew up on a small islet not far from Bora Bora. He attended high school in Hawaii and college in San Francisco.[2]
Introduced to art by his father, at the age of 18 he began to sculpt wood. Self-taught, he likes to work on living or rooted trees. But from 2001, he preferred to devote himself to volcanic stone, which he considers "timeless and immutable".[1]
Victor began a career as a presenter and producer of television shows. In 1998 he presented the program "Teva", documentaries on peoples and civilizations living in harmony with nature such as the Dogons, the Waoranis and the Toradja, for the television channel "la Cinquième, channel of knowledge and knowledge".[3] However, his passion for sculpture took over. His sculptures are often two-sided faces. They are both ancient Marquesan tiki, figurative busts of Vaiere Mara, and sometimes have an African influence.[4]
In 2012 he began exhibiting his stone sculptures every year at the Maison de la culture in Papeete. In February 2014 he joined the Center de Création Contemporaine Teroronui Papeete (CCCTP) for an ambitious collective exhibition alongside Chief Miko, Jonathan Bougard and photographer Massimo Colombini. The CCCTP was a transdisciplinary collective, whose objective was to work towards the perpetuation of local cultures while supporting the relationship with modern means of communication. His existence will have been fleeting. The same year Teva sold a work to the Hollywood producer Joel Silver, then a monumental sculpture to the Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan.[5] In 2015 he sold several monomental works to Guy Laliberté.[6]
In September 2015 he joined twenty Polynesian artists at the University of French Polynesia for Art Event,[7] a collective exhibition organized and financed by the UPF with the aim of supporting contemporary creation and artists, but also in order to participate to the artistic and cultural education of each person. His works were exhibited alongside those of Chief Miko and Andreas Dettloff.
At the end of 2015 he worked in situ with free access on a massive stone sculpture in front of the Muriavai room of the Maison de la culture, in Papeete. At the beginning of 2016 this creation was installed in front of the Grand theater of the Maison de la culture in Papeete.[8]
In 2016, Victor created a massive stone sculpture which sits in the hall of the Grand Theatre de la Maison de la Culture in Papeete, Tahiti.[9] In 2017 he made an 800 kilo stone representation of Queen Pomare IV which is installed in the Queen’s gardens in Papeete, Tahiti.[10] His art reflects his life philosophy: "Nothing can match the beauty of nature. We are only there to bring a nod to our passage."[11] [12]
In October 2021 he completed an imposing head with immense eyes and a luscious mouth, a commission intended for the decor of a British mansion where works by Auguste Rodin already stand.[13] It is a large work, approximately 1.50 m. Its weight is between 1.2 and 1.5 tonnes. Sending such a piece weighing more than a ton is not easy.[14]