Those who know the artist will perhaps recognise her face in the characters. The canvas is like a mirror in which to explore one’s identity. Originally, Rachel Marsil dives into her family photographs; each scene is an opportunity to revisit a memory, sometimes even to reinvent it. For the artist, painting is a narrative of a larger personal story where history with a capital H, intimate history and fantasized vision mix. Faced with the flaws of our memory, dreams and projections are powerful poetic tools. Everything in the paintings contributes to plunge us into a state in-between.

Some elements nevertheless keep us from the risk of absolute onirism; in particular the objects that the artist adds to her paintings. Rachel Marsil represents them in the same way as the characters, making them protagonists of the visual narrative in their own right. Finally, she adds a semantic charge that is far too pressing to be invented: the objects carry a sensitive and memorial weight. They crystallise as many moments as emotions experienced by the artist and at the same time send us back into our own intimate sphere contemplating our own Proust’s madeleine and our own forgetfulness.