Nihâl Martli

Each one of Nihal Martli's paintings can be read as a stage-like space within which the artist embraces the tradition of painting, and makes it ring out with her own experience. Her pictures are the means of "letting [her] own story exist in History", of becoming the character in an heroic adventure, be it tragic or ordinary. The self-portraits, which she paints in an almost exclusive (not to say compulsive) way thus encounter some of the great themes of art history and, with a mixture of fascination and defiance, summon up illustrious painters such as Eugène Delacroix, Frida Kahlo and others... Veering towards more or less fantasized autobiography, each one of Nihal Martli's works reveals a desire to escape. This is a devouring oeuvre which expresses the close link between the need to paint and the need to live. Translated Simon Pleasance