Featured Member
Isabelle Desjeux
Artist and Art Educator
By Megan Guerber
Contributor
Documentation of the Laboratory of Waste
Management installation in Open House
Singapore (2012). Image courtesy of the artist.
Isabelle Desjeux is a Singapore-based artist and art educator deeply driven by curiosity. She uses
her multidisciplinary practice to investigate the significance of failure, convention, and communication within the fields of art and science. As a former microbiologist with extensive laboratory
experience, Desjeux is primarily interested in the how of creation as well as the origins of new
inventions and great transformations.
Desjeux uses what she described to SciArt in America as both scientific and artistic methods to
“wonder at the world around [her].” Research and interviews play an important role in her body
of work, which often combines installations, lectures, and workshops. In her current project
Buang, the Lost Malay Scientist (2010–present ), which is about a 19th-century natural scientist from
the Malay Archipelago, Desjeux uncovers the largely unknown life of this important figure, questions why his role is missing from history books, and collaborates with scientists to imagine lowtech methods that could lead to modern scientific findings.
Desjeux is also founder and director of L’Observatoire: an Observatory for the Arts and Sciences, a series of classes, camps, and workshops for both children and adults. Some classes teach art
techniques like drawing and painting, while others thematically combine art and science to help
students explore the world in a new way.
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SciArt in America December 2014