FF Projects is pleased to present J’ai vu des choses que j’ai imaginées (I saw things I imagined), Rachel Marsil’s first solo exhibition in Nigeria, and the second presentation within FF Projects’ year-long residency at Alara Lagos. Bringing together 11 works on canvas, and 6 on paper, this exhibition charts an 18 month period between 2024 and 2025, during which the artist turned her attention to the interior life of the lone female figure.
Born in 1995 in Lille, and now based in Paris, Marsil, who is of French and Senegalese descent, graduated from the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs with a degree in textile design. Like many in the diaspora, the starting point for her work was in the excavation of her family’s albums, and her painting practice emerged from an attempt to make sense of her own displacement within these photographs. Furthermore, as a young biracial woman living in France, she recognised there was a whole part of her identity that would require travel in order to fully be grasped
When writing about Aubrey Williams’s work, Kobena Mercer suggested that the diasporic artistic practice is not “the recovery or redemption of the lost ancestor or an absent ancestry”, but rather “an investigation into the afterlife of the rupture.” We feel this acutely in Marsil’s work, in her own quest to piece together her future, while understanding her family’s past. Her paintings had initially concentrated on the different dynamics of the family unit; the father, lovers, sisters in various forms of embrace, highlighting the importance of feminine representation and support systems. Yet, her subjects were often depicted amongst lush, green foliage, or lounging on picnic blankets surrounded by mangoes. The locale of the paintings never felt specific, if anything, it was almost paradisiacal, like her version of the Garden of Eden.
Marsil also looked to the works of the West African studio photographers like Malick Sidibe and Seydou Keita, both as a rejection of prevalent European depictions of Africa, but also as references for what a contemporary West Africa might look like. Even with these influences, she retained the dream-like quality in her work, most notably in La grille verte, where the softness of her brushstrokes when treating the tenderly hugging women feels like the blur of a memory. Although her women are often clothed in vibrant patterns that we might associate with Africa, especially in her earlier works, they were rendered with an idealisation that felt like the result of distance. There was a sense that eventually, the time would come for her to move a bit closer.
In I saw things I imagined, for perhaps the first time, Marsil’s subjects are decidedly located in Africa, specifically West Africa. A distinct duality lies at the heart of this series; seeing and imagining, interior and exterior, the singular and the multiple, Europe and West Africa. There are motifs across these works that will be familiar to those that reside on the continent. The Monobloc chair appears in Un espace a nous, which although not African in origin, is a mainstay of African gatherings. In the same painting, we also see geometric breeze blocks, a staple of tropical modernist architecture. In both La Grille Verte and Fenetre sur coeur, the figures seem to emerge from popular motifs that we often see applied to iron gates and fences, usually inspired by Adinkra symbols. In A la balustrade, the female figure leans on a balcony, adorned with the same motifs, and behind her, a wall of glass blocks.
Marsil’s focus on design in these paintings is intentional, it signals a move from the exterior to the interior. From the intentional and posed works inspired by studio photographers, to the inner worlds of her subjects. Imagining what they might do within the confines of their own homes. This series also reflects her own journey into Africa, and how what began as an observational and curious practice, evolved into a welcoming community that she was decidedly part of. People opened up their homes, and she was allowed to enter. As such, these works allow a glimpse into what happens when you cross the boundary of diasporic imagination into local reality. In many of these paintings, the subject wraps their arms around themselves, in an embrace of self, a coming to, an acceptance. The motifs around gates and boundaries then serve almost as a means of self-protection, of building barriers around oneself in order to feel freely.
Of course, these are just suggestions, because ultimately, the expressions of Marsil’s characters do not change. Each figure is treated with the same alien-esque facial structure; a sharp jawline extends from a rounded out head. They all share elongated noses that stretch into eyebrows, full lips and closed, feline eyes. If expression is conveyed, we can’t see it. And that is intentional. The artist prefers what she describes as a sort of “facelessness”, that allows the viewer to project their own emotions onto the characters. She regards her subjects as a mirror, or as judgement-free friends. There is an unfinished quality to many of the paintings on show here. Marsil exposes the linen surface beneath her brushstrokes, or in some cases, the pencil marks of her preparatory sketches. This work does not pretend to be what it’s not. The artifice of painting is clear to see. Her planes are often flat, with large sections delineated by colour, often removing the guise of perspective altogether.
And, in some ways, there is a tension between the supposed ease of legibility of the paintings, and the facelessness of the subjects. She draws the viewer in with familiar motifs and patterns, broad swathes of colour and grand, assured poses; yet the closer one gets, the more insistently she forces moments of self-reflection. At a certain distance, the subjects and their closed eyes refuse to offer you the ease of understanding.
In a way, this has been her own artistic process too. The shift from multiple figures in the frame to the singular, self-possessed women we see in this show feels like a maturing. Over the 18 months in which she worked on these paintings, the subjects shifted from solely lone figures to protectors. In the three works on display here from her Guardian series, we see women taking possession of themselves– quite literally in the way that they hug themselves. In other paintings from this series (not shown here), she constructs the female guardian figures from the same motifs as the iron gates, a gesture reflecting their newly asserted self-sufficiency. They no longer need gates for protection; they have become protectors, both of themselves and those around them.
The show bears witness to Marsil’s artistic development over the course of the past two years. She has always experimented in real time, absorbing influences and references and bringing them into her own world. In two of the newer works on display, she introduces an embroidery component, with the sparkling addition of mother of pearl. Here, she was influenced by Gustav Klimt’s experimentations with mosaics. Yet this gesture is equally rooted in her own training: as a graduate of textile design, her study of cloth and its role in a woman’s presentation also comes to the fore.
If we refer back to Mercer’s theory on the afterlife, then Marsil’s world is a decidedly hybrid one. Stuart Hall writes about how post-colonial Caribbean cultural identities are made up of three presences - Presence Africaine, Presence Européene and Presence Américain. The Presence Africaine is "the site of the repressed", the now-mythical point of origin and unity. The European presence is the first colonial, now unmovable "extrinsic force" in Caribbean cultural identity that is "always-already fused, syncretised, with other cultural elements". Finally, the Presence Americain, which is the "beginning of diaspora." According to Hall, diaspora experience is defined "by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity, diversity; by a conception of 'identity' which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity." In this exhibition alone, Marsil’s references vary from Adinkra symbols, Greek Caryatides and Rem Koolhaas to Ekoi sculpture, Gustav Klimt and Constantin Brancusi.
The exhibition takes its title from a song by Solange Knowles, in which she gently recites “I saw things I imagined”, repeatedly, like an incantation. It is a song that Marsil loves, but also one that she deeply relates to, and one that represents a full circle moment. For her undergraduate degree show, in textile arts, she titled her presentation J’imagine le soleil, in English, I imagine the sun. At that point, she had not yet travelled to West Africa to explore her father’s land, and she could only dream of what it would be like. Now, several years later, having travelled to and exhibited her work across several countries in West Africa, rather than observe from afar, she can now look outward from within the gates. A coming of age. She saw things she imagined.
