Des Lucréce, Digital Artist interviewed by Selva Ozelli

Tell us about your journey to becoming a digital artist and why you prefer the digital art medium over others?

My journey into digital art started out of necessity. I didn’t have access to traditional materials or studio space growing up, but I did have a tablet, a bootleg copy of Photoshop, and time. Drawing digitally gave me the flexibility to work from anywhere, to experiment without fear of wasting materials, and to iterate endlessly in a way that left no physical traces. Over time, those tools became more than a means to an end— they became an extension of how I think.

After earning my BFA with a focus in design, I worked in the branding world, but I never felt creatively fulfilled. On a whim, I applied for an artist residency in Tokyo. I didn’t think I was qualified, but I got in— and it changed everything. I lived with five artists from different backgrounds who were years ahead of me in their practices. Their advice was simple but transformative: Make what’s true to you and show it to everyone who’ll look.

That’s where the seeds for Des Lucréce were planted. I created the alias as both a shield and a reflection of my identity— a nod to my Vietnamese roots, my love of French philosophy, and the long history of artists adopting personas to carve out their own space. I started posting the work I’d hidden for years, and it found an audience.

Going digital wasn’t just a practical choice— it was philosophical. The internet, like my identity, is fragmented, contradictory, and constantly under revision. Digital art gave me a space where those contradictions weren’t weaknesses— they were the language.

Digitized Decentralized Identification seems to be the way of the future https://crypto.news/decentralized-identifier-systems-are-key-to-the-future/.  Tell us about your latest series “The Erosion of Time and Neo-Techne: Art in the Age of the Machine” on exhibit at the Art Light Museum which invites audiences to explore themes of identity, displacement, and innovation in the digital age.

The Erosion of Time is my most ambitious exhibition to date— a fully immersive, 3,500-square-foot installation that blends animation, light, sound, and architectural scale to explore memory, cultural fragmentation, and the impermanence of digital identity. Exhibited at the Museum of Art + Light, the show is paired with Neo-Techne, a group exhibition that situates my work in dialogue with questions about technology, automation, and what it means to make art in a machine-mediated era.

Thematically, the exhibition builds on the idea that our identities— particularly as second-generation immigrants or culturally displaced people— are constantly eroding and being rewritten. We leave traces everywhere, yet feel rooted nowhere. The show uses a combination of celestial imagery, shifting landscapes, and meditative pacing to give form to this emotional terrain. There’s also a literal decay built into the projections— subtle loops where forms fall apart and reform, referencing both the fragility of memory and the persistence of digital traces.

There’s also a physical component to the show. I’ve created exclusive merchandise— plush figures and wearables— that extend the work beyond the screen. For me, this is about expanding Des Monsters into the everyday: they’re not just artworks, they’re avatars, totems, and mirrors of the self. It’s a way to let the work travel with people, and blur the line between art, identity, and utility.