Marina Rosselle is an artist living and working in Lille, France. After initially studying art history, she graduated in fine art from Valenciennes School of Fine Art and Design in 2001 and went on to do a master’s degree at the same institute in 2003. Rosselle takes part in exhibitions, workshops and residencies throughout France and Europe. She is associated with Galerie Kai Dikhas in Berlin and her work includes drawings, sculptures, photography and video.

Born into a Roma Traveller community in 1980, her artistic work has its roots in her family history and the lifestyle and multiple spaces of these communities, challenging the condescending views against this way of life. Her art attempts to describe their lifestyle, their many journeys and their successive appropriations of places. Inspired by the scrap merchants in her milieu, she collects and recovers the sometimes humble and unusual objects and materials around her to appropriate them through her art. To collect these objects, she says she is ‘required to move about, even – perhaps above all – within places that are not picturesque’, which encourages her to explore the ideas of vulnerability and perpetually changing matter. These both help anchor the work in the ephemeral, insecure activity of pottering and tinkering.

Realising that the multiple discredited or disregarded spaces her community lives in are often ultimately transformed by urban development, she tries to present them as places which continue to play an important role in shaping her identity. Thus her work refers to a direct perception and personal experience and rejects the folkloric representation associated with Roma people.

Exhibitions

2002
The Loops, Kent

2005
A Voir, La Madeleine, France
Quintessence – Galerie RX, Paris
Watch this space – 50°nord network, Maison Folie of Tourcoing

2006
Solo exhibition, Festival Itinérance Tziganes, Lyon
Solo exhibition, Urbanité par défaut, Galerie RX, Paris

2007
Solo exhibition, Collectif 12, Mantes-la-Jolie
Solo exhibition, FNASAT (the French national federation of associations for solidarity and action with Gypsies and Travellers), Paris
Festival Itinérance Tziganes, Lyon
Une utopie édifiante: La donation La pluie d’Oiseaux – La Piscine, Musée d’art et d’industrie André Diligent, Roubaix

2008
Vade Mecum – solo exhibition, Villa Myosotis, Dunkirk
L’appat du grain – solo exhibition, La Malterie, Lille

2011
Solo exhibition, Festival Dedans, Collectif 12, Mantes-la-Jolie

2014
3 days in Paris – Galerie Martine and Thibault de la Châtre, Paris
Have a look into my life! – Médiathèque Matéo Maximoff, Paris
Have a look into my life! – Strasbourg

2016
Spatii de Supravietuire – University of Architecture, Bucharest
Akathe Te Beshen: J’y suis, j’y reste – 59 rue de Rivoli, Paris
Frei Sein! – Heidelberg Palace
Überlebensräume – HDA Graz
Terrain vague – Galerie Kai Dikhas, Berlin

2017
Frei Sein! – Galerie Kai Dikhas, Berlin

Source: the artist, www.marinarosselle.fr