Roy Villevoye

Roy Villevoye (1960, Maastricht) studied at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, where he also currently works as an advisor. In the late 1980s he was assistant to Sol LeWitt.

After a succesful career as a painter in that period, he started following a new artistic course. Especially since 1992 when he began to travel frequently outside Europe, mostly to Papua, the former Dutch New Guinea. From then on his regular stays with the Asmat people inspired him to create a variety of works – first paintings, gradually also photographs and works in other media – about colour, cultural codification and identity.

His work has gradually developed as a testimony of -sometimes uncomfortable- encounters and dialogue between two asynchronous cultures, beyond the simplified scheme of progress, the primitive and the mythical and the conventional assessment of values and manners. It reflects the interdependence and complexity of these interactions. This is also a motive in a number of the films he has been making since 1998, often in collaboration with Jan Dietvorst.

He works in Amsterdam.

Roy Villevoye (NL 1960) bezoekt regelmatig de Asmat Papoea’s. De T-shirts die door Villevoye als cadeau waren meegenomen zijn op uitzonderlijke wijze door de Papoea’s bewerkt. Alle getoonde T-shirts zijn authentiek en zonder tussenkomst van Villevoye voor eigen gebruik door de Papoea’s vervaardigd.