The thousand and two stories of Fanny Irina
The audience listens attentively, the children play in the distance...
First attempt : It all starts with a mermaid...No, let's start again.
Second attempt: It all starts with shells collected off the coast of Brittany...No, let's start again.
- Well, are you going to start ?
- Yes yes, well I'm coming, I'm coming...`
Third attempt: I know! It begins with a story of gift because the image is what is given, always. It is a hand that sometimes prays, or begs, or offers, or asks, or calls, or summons or invokes - It's good, I found the right thread...
Why speak, here, of hands? There are many hands in Fanny Irina's work and the most important thing is to follow them with your eyes: where do they go? What do they tell? Some seem to tell the memory of shells turned into ceramics, others the story of a mermaid who seems to make an offering to outstretched arms.
With Fanny Irina, we sit on the ground, modestly, and open both hands to learn to receive what these paintings and objects (cards, shells) tell and give. We could talk about techniques, references, but we can also let ourselves be surprised by these images stretched like palms. In return, we also lean in and lend an ear.
The background, always uniform or almost in the artist's paintings, lets out some figures, those with which we fill an island with myths and stories, those with which we tell a thousand and two stories to populate the purple matter of our brains. The lands near the waters, here or there, African or other, have always known the stories of mermaids, of water-women, of seas that take and take again, that is why we will not look for the definitive origin of these myths. We leave everything to its chaos. The artist's narratives remain in their shells, it is up to us to blow the holes and delve into the missing parts.
This "critique" now disperses into the exhibition, into the audience...
Chris Cyrille
