Hello, today you have a free day - Marion Safriouine
Depoo Galery - Sofia
Exhibition opening: April 2nd, 2025
Exhibition period: 02-17.04.2025
Marion Safriouine (b. 1994) is a contemporary visual artist from Marseille, France. In 2020, Safriouine graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Aix-en-Provence, France. She works in the fields of painting and photography. For Marion, these mediums are fields of endless experimentation. That’s why her creative process is led by a constant play with photo collages, layering or removing paint, expressiveness in both color and black, which brings out multiple layers and meanings. In exploring the mutual complementarity of media, Safriouine captures the movement of transformation of the real image in her work. In this way, she manages to generate her own flow of creation, achieving a unique visual universe where the fusion of the real and the unreal is essential.
I use photography and painting to create confusion and ambiguity between our perceptions of reality and imagination. I incorporate familiar 'codes' from reality, like a small hook for the mind, entirely stemming from practical thinking and analogy. I let these mental images drift in an intermediate universe.
In photography, by manipulating colors, intensity, flash, cyan and deep black, saturation and overexposure, the image ‘crosses over’ into a kind of field beyond reality, leaving only fragmentary details on a surface marked by erasure and distortion, creating space for fantasy or an unconscious nostalgic narrative.
On the other hand—in painting—through multi-layered strokes, textures, and images, I give density and form to visions born from the immaterial and the imaginary,
the artist shares about her creative practice.
Marion Safriouine arrived in Sofia on March 21st at the invitation of Visionary for a 2-week art residency. She immediately jumped into the shoes of a regular tourist with a free day and camera in her hand to explore the city.
For her exhibition “Hello, today you have a free day”, Marion uses serigraphy to share her impressions of Sofia with the audience. After 3 intensive “free” days of walking and visiting tourist-familiar places and completely hidden gems in the streets of Sofia, in a process of experimentation she imprints selected images from her camera into a series of unique serigraphy collages on the abstract compositions she created during the residency at Bohemingway atelier.
The invitation extended to Marion Safriouin to visit Sofia is part of Visionary’s ongoing mission to showcase and collaborate with abstract artists through a format that combines an artist residency with an exhibition of international artists in Bulgaria. The project began in 2022 with the art residency of Yannick Martin (France) and a series of artistic interventions he carried out in Sofia.
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This project is a part of the series of Abstract Residencies produced by VISIONARY and it is the 1st phase from the 2-fold artistic exchange between Sofia & Marseille in 2025 in partnership with Urban Gallery - Marseille.
Marion’s residency in Sofia is organized with the financial support of National Culture Fund - Bulgaria, Mobility program 2024, and The Singer-Zahariev Foundation.
Photos from silk-printing process: Magdalena Dudova