Anna Solal

Anna Solal was born in Dreux in 1988. She lives and works in Paris. She belongs to a new generation of artists distinguished by a predilection for the “handmade”, for the non-hierarchical cross-fertilization of processes borrowed from art and craft. Her assemblages are made from discarded objects gleaned from her wanderings. They are recomposed into aerial motifs, like birds or kites. Brutally figurative, this pop iconography, anxious and moving, highlights the isolation of the individual and a form of abstraction in which he or she navigates. Anna Solal has exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the CAC Passerelle in Brest, the Musée des abattoirs in Toulouse, and Interstate Projects (New York).

At Villa Medici, she is developing a project entitled “Empire défaillant”, a series of sculptural tableaux composed of collages incorporating drawing and photography. The theme of this project is the human collective, defined in terms of inter-human relations and its relationship to the natural environment. It will take as its temporal framework Ancient Rome, which once dominated the world, Fascist Rome, and today’s Rome with its mass tourism. This collective will be embodied in organic, symbolic work using paper and textiles. A text created by Olivier Prada will accompany this plastic project: the tale of a donkey reincarnated as a tear, traveling through a devastated Europe. While the notion of collapse is clearly present, with ecological and imperial disasters, new forms of life emerge, and the notion of a miracle is born – a miracle that may or may not happen.