Residence Tokyo, Japan Movement Neurodiversity | Years active 1998 – present Home town Le Havre | |
 | ||
Full Name Angélique Adrianna Govy Born 12 April 1981 (age 35) ( 1981-04-12 ) Mont-Saint-Aignan, France Occupation Artist, Designer, Performer, Director, Producer Known for Visual Art
Design
Autism rights activism Notable work Photographic Diary
Serial Bondage
Yozakura Sake Set
SpaceTime Coordinates Other names Jimmy Owenns, Kennedy James | ||
govy (born 12 April 1981) is a French artist diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum in 2013, and is an advocate for the Neurodiversity Movement. She is the recipient of three A' Design Awards and two Videoformes Awards.
Contents
Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Zendai MoMA of Shanghai, Triennale Design Museum of Milan, WIELS Contemporary Art Center of Brussels, Casoria Contemporary Art Museum of Naples, Rosario Museum of Contemporary Art of Santa Fe (Argentina) and Nuit Blanche of Paris. Her first design piece, the "Yozakura sake set" can be found at the MoMA design store in NYC and Tokyo.
Visual art
Govy is best known for her interactive art piece “Photographic Diary" (2000 – 2001) in which she took series of photographs every day during a year and the series of Shibari installations “Serial Bondage" (2006 – 2013) which incorporates her peculiar fascination with Japanese rituals and aesthetics.
Since 2015, govy has been focusing more on science and space art projects. She is mostly working on the concept of spacetime (or the 4th dimension) and a "specific individual human life in the bigger picture of the universe" with the “SpaceTime Coordinates” projects, which use data from NASA JPL to generate personalised art pieces.
From 2001 until 2008, she has been using the artist name "Jimmy Owenns" with the tagline "Artist Without a Sexual Identity". During this period she created the "Photographic Diary" an award winning interactive work that has been featured in the book Taschen’s 1000 Favorite Websites A work on the notions about the splitting of the perception, narration or psyche and the search for identity.
In 2008, she adopted her second artist name "Kennedy James" and moved to NYC with an artist visa.
Since 2015, she goes as "govy", her rare French family name.
Early work
Before debuting her visual work with photography, govy performed in a few theater, video pieces and films but then decided to focus on writing. In 1999, she published the first book on the internet that actually looked like a real book, which would be published in 2001 under the title "Mes Cendres Nues" by French publisher IDLivre. Her early wiritng is also part of the French Poetry Anthology “Les Nouveaux Poètes Français et Francophones”, published by Edition Huguet in 2004.
In 2000 she started an interactive piece where she would photograph her daily life during one year without interruption. This early piece launched her career as a visual artist as it was one of the first interactive pieces on the internet at the time and created before the fashion of photographic diaries via blogs would start spreading worldwide in 2004. In retrospect, it could be considered an art piece very much about growing up on the Autism Spectrum and struggling with a personal quest of identity. This work has received two awards and has been exhibited internationally in art galleries and museums.
Muse
In 2011, her face launched the storytelling website Cowbird, with the first story published "1000 Words" written by Scott Thrift.
The City and Horses pop band wrote a song about their relationship in 2013.