With Travel Memories, Jephan de Villiers creates a reliquary chest that seems to emerge from a forgotten civilisation or from a deeply buried inner territory. The aged wooden box, marked by time, contains several wrapped forms covered with hand-drawn signs resembling an unknown script. These fragments evoke seeds, sacred stones, talismans or precious archives rescued from a distant journey. Nothing is entirely revealed: the work preserves its mystery, like the remains of a language whose meaning has been lost.

Through delicately assembled humble materials — weathered wood, fibres, cords, pigments, paper and organic elements — Jephan de Villiers transforms memory into matter. The chest becomes a fragile vessel, not for identifiable events, but for emotions, traces and silent presences.

For decades, the artist has developed a singular universe built from collected fragments and poetic reliquaries. His works often appear less created than discovered, as though unearthed from a sensitive archaeology of the imaginary.At the crossroads of sculpture, invented writing and ritual object, Travel Memories invites the viewer to symbolically open a hidden memory and to invent their own narrative of travel.