Rachel Marsil

A graduate of the École des Arts Décoratifs in textile design, her multidisciplinary work deals with questions of identity and the representations that may be linked to it. Through her intellectual and visual research, Rachel Marsil attempts to understand the different dynamics of memory and identity conveyed by the cultural circulation of images, particularly archival and personal images, in a postcolonial, multicultural, and globalized world. The thesis completed at the end of her degree in 2020, entitled «En-Quête de soi, En-Quête par l’image», explores these questions through studies of works and texts as well as through a reflexive analysis of her own artistic approach.

Initially guided by questioning of identity around her origins and the construction of her imagination on her own mixed race, Rachel Marsil approaches these questions through the notion of exoticism and family photographs, understood as «lacunar images» (G. Didi- Huberman), images that are both trace and disappearance, which are reconstructed by the individual both through memory and through the imagination of the family. of exoticism and family photographs, understood as «lacunar images» (G. Didi-Huberman), images that are both trace and disappearance, which are reconstructed by the individual through both memory and imagination. The artist is thus part of a process of reappropriation of the self, in order to no longer be subjected to the gaze of the other and to become a subject questioned by himself and also questioning the images he produces.

In the interwoven manner of the weavings in some of her works, Rachel Marsil advocates an intersubjective approach to her practice, enriched by references to fashion and music, as well as vernacular skills such as braiding. In her works on paper or canvas, we find the art of the motif, the mastery of colors with vibrant shades, the sometimes posed attitudes of the characters, and the quasi-photographic framing.