In “Folded Souls”, currently on view at our gallery, Marie Isabelle Poirier Troyano transforms textile into something far more physical and emotional: surfaces that breathe, folds that hold memory, and materials shaped slowly by time and by hand.
Her work emerges from years of research into Japanese Shibori, embroidery, and printmaking, but also from a deeply intuitive relationship with matter itself. Trained in Paris alongside master artisans and textile houses such as Lesage, Prelle, Pierre Frey, and ELITIS, Marie gradually developed a highly personal visual language where textile moves beyond decoration and becomes sculptural, tactile, and deeply sensorial.
“I was always drawn to the graphic aspect of Shibori — the trace left by folds and that moment before the form fully appears.”
What began with natural dyes on silk slowly evolved into a more physical and architectural investigation. Today, her works combine jute, cotton, denim, and leather, manipulated through folding, stitching, compression, and bleaching processes that reveal texture, tension, and memory within the material itself.
After more than fifteen years exploring Shibori, Marie has developed a unique approach to the technique, bringing it closer to painting and printmaking. Layers, transparencies, reserves, and gesture all become part of a slow process where the work gradually reveals itself.
“I begin almost like a meditation. Little by little I step back and shape the work like a sculptor.”
This sense of experimentation has also led her toward new research using denim and bleaching processes, where the image appears almost through subtraction. By preserving the hidden interior of folded fabrics, Marie creates surfaces that feel both graphic and organic, balancing control with chance.
One of the most important moments in her recent career came when her work “Feelings” (2024) was selected as a finalist for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2025 and later exhibited at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid — an important recognition of a practice that has quietly evolved over decades.
Marie also reflects on the growing presence of textile and craft-based practices within contemporary art, while acknowledging the many women artists who paved the way before this renewed attention.
“I’ve worked with textiles for more than thirty years, and now it seems fashionable. But many artists before us opened this path.”
Influenced by artists such as Sheila Hicks, Anni Albers, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and Sonia Delaunay, Marie continues to create works that are not only seen, but felt — works rooted in tactility, slowness, and the hand, while increasingly expanding toward monumental and architectural dimensions.
“I’m starting to give the work an XXL dimension.”
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