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Eva Nielsen
The works in the Insula series were conceived and designed during Eva Nielsen's two residencies at the LVMH and BMW Art Makers studios, of which she was the winner in 2021 and 2023 respectively.
Eva Nielsen experiments, mixing and superimposing her archives, which rise to the surface of the canvas and of memory. The painter tirelessly draws on a personal image bank, images taken during her travels, and countless pictorial and literary references, both ancient and contemporary. The Insula were conceived starting with residual images printed on transparent papers hung on the walls of the studio, followed by scraps of leather and canvas, the mastery of which was fine-tuned every week and month with the teams from the LVMH tannery and silk factory. These images filtered and infiltrated the leather, then the organza, to rediscover the granular, shimmering dimension so dear to the artist. On the leather, oil-painted sfumatos bring the printed images to the surface like particles floating in water. An atmosphere of flux, veils and veiling, the painting becomes cinematic, kinetic, catching its breath and allowing air to pass between the elements. When Eva Nielsen creates these paintings using blurred photographs from a family album as the source image, it's because she is drawn into the depths of memory that she “discovers”, accessing the undecided zone of her memories.