We began the new season of studio visits with Rosa Joly, in her Berlin studio in Moabit, which she shares with the painter Sebastian Wigand and which they also manage together as the Scheusal project space. After studying art in Hamburg and Paris, Rosa Joly chose to settle in Berlin. Here, she develops her practice around installation, mixed media figuration, photography, and film.
Particularly interested in the analog process, Rosa Joly experiments with old and new techniques to produce photographic or animated images. Her inspiration comes from important figures on the art scene of the last century, such as Chantal Akerman, Jay DeFeo. She is also interested in old masters and classical painting, such as Bernt Notke’s Totentanz: a wall painting from the 15th century originally installed in the Saint Mary’s Church in Lübeck (Germany), showing members of the parish dancing with the Death represented as a black skeleton. The painting was destroyed during the Second World War and now only exists in old images and reproductions, but Rosa Joly uses and reuses the images she made inspired by this painting, giving new life to the artwork, like a new homage to this “memento mori” reactivated in the present.
In dialogue with art history as much as with her own archives and works, Rosa Joly echoes forms from the past and increases their symbolic dimensions. Her vibrant aesthetic explores themes like time, disappearance, and death. She addresses these subjects through a personal iconography, incorporating portraits of loved ones, family photographs, and intimate interior scenes, creating a poignant reflection on memory and the passage of life.