Sissi Club, Marseille
Inès Di Folco
As “sadness hand in hand with daydreaming”, Inès DI FOLCO’s paintings are imbued with a lascivious melancholy, with an awareness of passing time. Inspired by her trip to Cairo, the artist invokes the practice of “Fayoum portraits” and delivers nine paintings like icons, gazing towards the beyond.
On black-coated walls, the display is an invitation to the languor of the evening, a tipping point where the real meets the spiritual. Suspended in the heart of space, Three Sisters and an Angel is an ode to the night. In a game of contrast between brilliance and darkness, vegetation and flowers proliferate, the ocher reddens, mothers enthrone and ancestors watch.
Around it, eight paintings pursue the idea of peregrinations as a contemplative dream. Colorful sparkles stand out against dark backgrounds while the artist plays with blur effects, experiments with pigments, materials and textures.
Inès has been constructing a long process of documentation and investigation, inspired by literature, her travels, and music. As images, her paintings address the themes of micro-history and archives, memory, cults, and ritual practices in the world.
Inès DI FOLCO’s paintings are like floating narratives nourished by a recomposed heritage. Driven by the transmission of knowledge, she cherishes collaborative works and involves those close to her in her pieces.
Born in Paris in 1993, multidisciplinary artist Inès DI FOLCO graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2018. She recently presented her work at the Anne de Villepoix gallery (Paris), La Corvée (Paris), and with Drawing a Blank (London). In 2020 and 2021, her work was exhibited at the FRAC Lorraine (Metz), the Salon de Normandy (Paris), the Biennale Carbone (Saint- Etienne), and the SISSI club (Marseille). She performed at Bétonsalon (Paris) and the Rencontres de la Photographie (Arles). She also published several artists’ books with Elena VALTCHEVA and the complicity of Red Lebanese editions. Finally, she co-created the groups Rose Mercie and Pira Pora.
