Conversation: Marie Zolamian & Sofia Dati (FR)
On the occasion of the exhibition Confabulations, Marie Zolamian is in conversation with curator Sofia Dati.
Together, they discuss the artist’s practice and how encounters, displacement, and memories inform it—an approach that leads her to conceive of painting as a “space of hospitality.”
Photo: Karin Borghouts
This conversation offers a dive into the world of Marie Zolamian, an artist for whom painting means “inhabiting visible and invisible layers.” Through her work, she seeks to construct memory through art, transforming the imaginary into recollection. Her practice unfolds through her travels, moving from one micro-locality to another, collecting fragments of stories and imagery to create hybrid, multifaceted geographies.
Between “chosen exiles” and processes of (re)rooting, Zolamian approaches each canvas as a “place of passage,” prepared with the care of a home awaiting a guest. Drawing on influences from medieval miniatures to ex-votos, she assembles a constellation of nomadic images that explore our relationship to others and to elsewhere. This discussion invites a journey through themes of hospitality, cultural hybridity, and the power of imagination to reinvent reality.