Fanxi Delarue… There’s something mysterious in the pairing of two names that are so evocative of their (very different) countries of origin. However, this complete first and last name represents the story´ of the woman behind it. It all begins with an articulate city girl from Inner Mongolia’s largest city and industrial center, Baotou, who wanted to explore the world. Her first contact with the French language happened in Madagascar when she moved over there to work in the import-export industry. Bitten by the travel bug, she adjusted her career to the opportunities she would get to see the world. Things accelerated quickly.
Soon a senior executive in merchandising, she hopped aboard the work-andtravel- abroad train from Shanghai to Singapore to Lille (France), selling cashmere or trading metal.
Restless and roving, her life took a turn for the best when she met her husband, a French-Australian executive with an international career who shared Fanxi’s wanderlust. After getting married in Johannesburg and traveling throughout Africa, they lived in Dubai and Hong Kong before settling down in Paris, by then parents of three young children. Every new country, every new experience was another opportunity for Fanxi to learn and study, emphasizing design as a growing interest. Photography was always there, in the background, but took off in her life when she was in Dubai and started working on children’s portraiture, finding herself a na tural at capturing personalities.
But there is more to Fanxi’s creative process than a talent for composition and a flair for art. She simply calls it intuition. But the arc is the following: a journey through light, matter, and composition in a quest for beauty. Truly seeing is a gift in that it enables imagemaking and abstraction. Having it means being able to materialize amazement.
“Nature is beautiful. How can I help you contemplate it? This is the way I challenge myself: trying to create something that tells a story. Texture and shadows are my greatest tools for that.”
Even though Fanxi considers herself Chinese and may be awarded the Citizen-of-the-World passport (if it existed), she considers St. Barts her second home:
“After all these many years of travels and counting, St. Barts remains incomparable in terms of inspiration and lifestyle”.
