Villa 15

BY BRUNO AVEILLAN

TEXT BY ZOÉ BALTHUS

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Sonu and Eva


Life in the wild, real life

With my friends, it’s not the same. They are the savage cannibals and she is beautiful Jane who I have saved from being eaten. So I am Tarzan. We all go into the woods on our bicycles and hide, hanging on the creepers.

There are lots of little dragons that change color all the time and we can always hardly see them until the very last minute. They surprise us at first, sometimes they really make our hearts stop then we all laugh. I take selfies all the time to stick in my diary.

There are funny little hens walking on little paths everywhere. We run after them while they cluck and we have to speed up pretending to hunt. Poor things, we don’t want to hurt them of course. And it is not allowed to catch them, it would disturb the trust and peace we all have in the island. It would be sad.

You have to have something to eat on a desert island though. So we rush to the sweet pavilion. We stuff ourselves with candy, cake, chocolate and ice-cream. I’m quite happy with my two scoops of coconut sorbet and two scoops of chocolate ice-cream with chocolate sauce and multicolored hundreds and thousands all over the top. I’m not having Chantilly cream though. Maman says I’ll get overweight. I shouldn’t go too far, still this is holiday in paradise.


Papy is laughing at us, “Some desert island... dessert island! So much for life in the wild! You spoilt little monkeys!” He makes funny faces that always make us laugh like crazy.


Curated By:

Bruno Aveillan

Bruno Aveillan, international film director, photographer and visual artist, dedicates his activity to several fields of expression. He has developed a very personal approach to his art which includes photography shows and books as well as experimental films and installations which are regularly exhibited throughout the world. The work of this globetrotter artist focuses above all on the human condition and on the concepts of wandering and memory. His style is characterized by a certain way of “drawing with light” or “obscuring with light” as stated by artist Marcos Lutyens in the foreword of Aveillan’s book Diotopes. As film director and photographer he has received over 180 awards and his work is internationally acclaimed. Many of his pieces feature in prestigious collections, both private and public, throughout Europe, the United States and Asia. Further to the exhibition Bruno Aveillan, retrospective of a world master held in 2014 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) of San Diego, the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow (MAMM) held a major exhibition entitled Isolation Ceremony in 2015. Again in 2015, Aveillan’s work was shown at the Grand Palais during the Art Paris show and a major retrospective entitled Flashback was held at the Contemporary Art Center of Perpignan. In 2014, the eminent house Hasselblad published the work of Aveillan’s work in its book VICTOR #2, alongside such great names as David Hockney and Anton Corbijn. Aveillan has published several books including Diotopes (Léo Scheer, 2008), Mnemo # Lux (Kerber, 2010), Fascinatio (Chez Higgins, 2011), Fulguratio (Chez Higgins, 2011), Bolshoi Underground (Au-delà du raisonnable, 2012), Acetate Spirit (NOIR, 2013) and produced experimental films such as Minotaur-Ex (2006), Morpholab (2009), WHEAT (2008) and Papillon (2012).

Zoé Balthus

Zoé Balthus is a writer, an art critic, a blogger and a culture reporter for an international news agency. She has spent about twenty years abroad (Vietnam, USA, Britain, New-Zealand, Pakistan, Uruguay) and keeps on travelling around the world. She wrote essays on Bruno Aveillan’s work published in Mnemo # Lux (Kerber, 2010), Fascinatio (Chez Higgins, 2011), Fulguratio (Chez Higgins, 2011), Bolshoi Underground (Au-delà du raisonnable, 2012), poems Acetate Spirit (NOIR, 2013), foreword and texts in Flashback (NOIR, 2015) as well as texts for his experimental films such as Minotaur-Ex (2006), Morpholab (2009) and Papillon (2012). She also worked with the photographer Olivier Coulange, Txiki Margalef, Claude Rouyer and the sculptors Paul de Pignol, Nicolas Alquin, François Weil, the visual artists Cécile Hug and Bruno Hadjadj. She published the short story Voir, toute une histoire in the litterature review Behind (2015) ; the essay Les Trahisons terrestres de Marina Tsvétaeva in the review La Moitié du Fourbi (2015) ; the short story Amande douce (Derrière la Salle de bains, 2015) ; the essay Walter Benjamin, la plume à l’envers in the review La Moitié du Fourbi (2014) ; the short story A l’extrémité fuyante d’elle-même (Derrière la Salle de Bains, 2013) ; the essay Rilke et Tsvétaeva s’effleurent au septième ciel in the review Nunc (2012).




© 2015, Éditions

Photographs: Bruno Aveillan Texts: Zoé Balthus

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