Festifemmes

She is a local girl, from Bonifacio to be precise.

Whether she's carving marble or drawing with dry pastels, Aude Ambroggi always conjures up long faces with enormous eyes. Inspired by Romanesque sculptures or Symbolist paintings, scientific plates devoted to animals or plants, and family photo albums, these figures possess a disconcerting stillness. They are metamorphosed and interwoven like memories in dreams. Always seductive, sometimes unsettling, their very large format is intimidating. Between the figures depicted, the viewer imagines definitive silences but also intense bonds. The father protects the child, the child, the mother. Everything that is stifled by anxious love is evoked here. Clear lines, evanescent textures, limpid colors: the virginal treatment of each image sublimates its obviousness.

Born in Africa, a globetrotter in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Mexico from the age of seventeen, Aude Ambroggi studied drawing at Saint Martin's School in London after four years of studying criminology. She describes her work as "very instinctive," even though she draws inspiration from the works of the Old Masters. Fra Angelico's frescoes, Beckmann's paintings, Diane Arbus's photographs—the art of all those who see the world with lucidity, yet tenderness, fascinates her. Inventing? "Painters have already done everything. Only the interpretations, the narratives are different. I don't feel like I'm doing anything new, not at all." Painting nonetheless? "It's human nature! You can't do anything else. And this profession offers so much freedom. No office. No orders. It's very simple." Persevering? "You never find yourself." We situate ourselves in relation to the accepted aspects of existence. And we tell ourselves how lucky we are to live and to grow old. From sculpture to painting, Aude Ambroggi continues her talented artistic journey.

Françoise Monnin