Marie-Dominique Boneu Hyman (MDO) is a multidisciplinary artist who practices photography, painting, drawing and who specializes in lacquer.
At 20, the doors of the School of Decorative Arts in Paris opened wide in front of her. One day, she chatted with another student who told her about her exchange program with the School of Fine Arts in Hanoi where she had studied lacquer. She felt attracted by an idea: to go to another continent and study a mysterious painting technique...
After graduating in 1995, she went to India for six months to work at Mother Theresa's hospice. It was an initiatory journey. She took many pictures and made many drawings of women disfigured by life. She was 25 and she wasn't the same when she came back.
In Paris, she started working as an assistant stylist: the contrast with India couldn't be greater! It had nothing to do with her passion and she was not producing artistically. It was around this time that she met her husband and in 1999 they both left the advertising world and ended their freelance activities. They went on an overland trip from Paris to Hanoi. They drank from the world. On a crumpled piece of paper, she had the telephone number of a lacquerer in Hanoi.
As soon as she arrived, she began her apprenticeship. She discovered that by choosing hairspray, she imposed limits on herself that she had to overcome. Working with a precious material was an additional pleasure, because vegetable lacquer is alive, rare and almost eternal. She quickly started experimenting with lacquer in her first studio, taking lessons with different masters. She gradually stopped working with other mediums. After four years in Hanoi, they decided to move to Canada.
In Toronto, she set up a bilingual workshop with a Quebec artist. They wanted to create a space where they could work, give lessons and exhibit their works. Unfortunately, the energy needed to attract students and earn a living has encroached on their needs as artists. They then decided to start their life over in Vientiane, the Laotian capital, quiet and dusty.
In 2010, she slowly started producing again and had solo exhibitions in Vientiane, Toronto and Siem Reap, where she was invited in August 2018 to participate in the Asia Lacquer Exchange Program.
She was proud to be recognized by her peers and admitted into this group of stubborn individualists who still use vegetable hairspray in a world where synthetics and quick results have the upper hand. It has acquired a rare know-how and it is the link of a thousand-year-old tradition.
She shares this world that touches her with her paintings that she patiently creates in her studio overlooking a small lake whose light changes from hour to hour. Asia has once again become her home and it is there that she develops her artistic career.
Marie-Dominique Boneu Hyman (MDO) was born in Toulouse (France) in 1971. She lives and works in Vientiane in Laos. She has participated in many exhibitions. His work has been acquired by collectors around the world.
