Église Sainte Foy

Perched above the Rhône valley, the Romanesque church of Sainte Foy has watched over Mirmande since the twelfth century. Its single nave, stripped bare and lit only by narrow openings, offered Sonya Tanios a space of unusual silence: walls of dry stone, a floor worn smooth by centuries, and a light that moves slowly from one side of the nave to the other over the course of a day.

For this solo exhibition the artist assembled a body of paintings built from oil, marble powder and raw pigment — a matter that holds light rather than reflecting it. Hung directly against the stone, the canvases entered into dialogue with the fabric of the building: the granular surface of the paint answering the grain of the wall, the Mediterranean blues and ochres answering the warm limestone of the Drôme.

The works gathered here continue a line of enquiry the artist has pursued since leaving Lebanon: landscape as a form of memory. Harbours, terraces, thresholds and figures caught in full light are less descriptions of a place than attempts to hold onto one. In the half-darkness of the church, that light became the subject itself.

The exhibition was accompanied by studio visits and conversations with the artist, and remains, in her own account, one of the settings in which her painting has felt most at home.