Pete Doherty is certainly a tumultuous artist, but the work I hav e created around the Babyshambles’ track You Talk leaves an impression of softness and calm. The choice of a portrait showing the singer with a cat on his shoulders clearly plays a part in this feeling. I wanted conveyed the line “The light behind your eyes.” I have pierced the photo with 50,000 needle holes through which light passes to reveal the song’s lyrics.

Lyrics! is a collective exhibition born from Olivier Dermaux’s love of music. An art director at Publicis, Olivier wanted to create an exhibition and a catalogue in collaboration with artists whose work he admires. Each artist selected the lyrics of a singer who was meaningful to them and created a visual work inspired by those words. The exhibition took place in Paris at the Hélène Bailly Gallery, and a catalogue was published to accompany it.

The Light Behind Your Eyes I decided to work with the lyrics of Pete Doherty, an artist I’m very fond of. “The light behind your eyes” carries a poetic power that moves me. I chose to take these lyrics literally by working on a backlit portrait of Pete Doherty. The lyrics are drawn using a pearl-necklace–style typography, then redrawn by hand through tiny needle holes. The light subtly reveals the words across the portrait of Pete with his cat on his shoulder. Both Pete and the cat gaze in harmony at an imaginary object. The reflections in their eyes further enhance the artist’s lyrics.

Exhibition curated by Olivier Dermaux.