La Prisonnière

Miroir, acier, polyéthylène et encre / Mirror, steel, polyethylene and ink

170 x 20 x 20 cm / 66 7/8 x 7 7/8 x 7 7/8 in

2022

For her first solo exhibition, "Ne me retiens pas", at the 75 Faubourg gallery, Inès Mélia presents her latest series of paintings which centre around "La Prisonnière", the fifth volume of Marcel Proust’s "À la recherche du temps perdu". The text is present throughout the exhibition, as a formal motif and a narrative material. The artist plays upon the mistranslation in the Gospel according to Saint John in which Jesus, resurrected, adresses Mary Magdalene and says "Noli me tangere", which was translated by "do not hold me back" rather than by "do not touch me". The exhibition questions these notions of loss and fading traces which always go hand in hand with the desire to hold back. Inès Mélia’s "À la recherche" series delves into the tension between text and visual form, drawing inspiration from Marcel Proust’s "À la recherche du temps perdu". The artist reimagines Proust’s narrative, particularly the character of Albertine, by transforming the text into abstract, dynamic visual compositions. Using the structure of the book itself as a medium, Mélia flattens and reworks its pages into large painted canvases, liberating the words and creating a space where language, form, and color converge. The paintings are a means to set the text free, to make it resurface. "For me, the book is a graphic, minimal and reassuring medium which allows me to organise and sort out my inner world."