{"id":31111,"date":"2026-07-10T02:14:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/31111\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T02:14:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:14:18","slug":"at-ebbio-the-art-consultancy-ida-offers-artists-unstructured-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/31111\/","title":{"rendered":"At Ebbio, the Art Consultancy IDA Offers Artists Unstructured Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"A<\/a>The restored 13th-century farm where IDA hosts its biannual residency. Courtesy IDA<\/p>\n

IDA<\/a>, a four-year-old Parisian consulting agency specialized in the development of art acquisitions, exhibitions, custom commissions and events, primarily connects corporate enterprises with artists. But founders Florence Marmiesse<\/a>, a French art consultant who came up through Sotheby’s<\/a> and Artcurial<\/a>, and Camilla D’Alfonso<\/a>, an Italian photographer, also launched a short-term summer residency in Italy as a distinctive way to foster artist projects.<\/p>\n

Since founding the agency, they\u2019ve teamed with players in the world of hospitality\u2014hotels, restaurants, real estate\u2014to, as Marmiesse puts it, determine \u201chow art can be injected in different aspects of companies.\u201d It\u2019s imperative, on the one hand, to understand the company\u2019s needs: \u201cwe make sure it\u2019s made on budget, it\u2019s made on time, the deadlines are respected,\u201d but also, \u201cwe do a lot of pedagogy\u201d\u2014meaning educating organizations about artistic value and pushing their thinking to be more elastic.<\/p>\n

(The two are regularly contacted by hotels that say, we have a wall, can you fill it? \u201cWe\u2019re like: that\u2019s not really the way it works to create an exhibition,\u201d says Marmiesse. D\u2019Alfonso affirms: \u201cWe\u2019re not decorators.\u201d)<\/p>\n

On the flip side, Marmiesse adds, the artist\u2019s needs are just as important. \u201cYou need to pay the artist; they need to be raised up\u2026 we, as the intermediary, are making sure the artists feel well understood and respected, that they have freedom and are able to do their art properly. We make sure the artists are not used as a marketing tool: we want to value their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A\"A<\/a>Amandine Guruceaga\u2019s sculptural works in \u201cGreenhouse \u2013 Blue eyes\u201d in the lobby of the Hoxton in Paris. Photo: Gr\u00e9gory Copitet, courtesy IDA<\/p>\n

Throughout the year, they accompany their clients on art buying missions, supporting patronage and commissions. They\u2019ve collaborated with modeling agency Eileen Ford and Hoxton Hotels<\/a>. Some of their time is spent scouting for artists at art fairs, attending graduation shows at \u00c9cole nationale sup\u00e9rieure des Beaux-Arts and other schools of their ilk and doing studio visits.<\/p>\n

The agency name references the highest mountain in the most populous island of Greece, Crete, where Marmiesse and D\u2019Alfonso once traveled and where, according to legend, the Greek god Zeus was born. Although based in Paris, both travel frequently: \u201cit\u2019s very important for us to be able to get out of the Parisian microcosm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A\"A<\/a>Camilla D\u2019Alfonso and Florence Marmiesse. \u00a9 IDA<\/p>\n

Thinking beyond the Paris microcosm prompted the creation of the artist residency at Ebbio, a restored 13th-century farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside in proximity to Siena and an hour\u2019s drive from Florence (also not far from Castello di Ama, a winery that also hosts artists). Set among an especially fertile landscape beneath which roils a volcanic geology, the program is open to artists worldwide regardless of medium. It is very short, taking place every two years, two weeks apiece for four artists across two summer sessions, but comes with curatorial, administrative and logistical support.<\/p>\n

The partnership with Ebbio is incumbent on the property\u2019s availability, since at other times it\u2019s a yoga retreat and operational hotel. The residency is anchored around a perennial theme, \u201cSeeds Grow,\u201d championing experimentation and artistic development. The theme helps refine the selection process, which respectfully aligns with the naturalism of the seven hectares, given its bounty of olive trees, lavender fields, summer garden bursting with herbs and vegetables, and array of chicken and geese. The emphasis on nature is \u201cnot a greenwashing, but really because we want to give value to it,\u201d Marmiesse says.<\/p>\n

For the residency\u2019s second year, the selection was guided by a jury of art world figures including Sotheby\u2019s auctioneer Phyllis Kao<\/a>, journalist George Nelson<\/a>, gallerist Romero Paprocki<\/a>\u2014whose Parisian space will host the results of the residency in Paris in July 2027\u2014and the two founders of IDA. They seek diversity in terms of medium, nationality and career path, with each juror proposing several candidates in addition to reviewing outside applications, which this year spanned 27 nationalities.<\/p>\n

The first cycle of artists culminated in an exhibition in 2024 in Rome at the Institut Fran\u00e7ais and in a hotel. Beyond that, Louise Vendel<\/a> did an exhibition in a deconsecrated church, shifting her typical black and blue palette to Tuscan orange and yellow. Jade Tang<\/a> did a large-scale piece about Tuscan vegetation, shown at the DRAC in France. Yoan Estivenin<\/a> had a show at Art Paris inspired by animals on the property and objects in the farmhouse. Dancer Solian Rios<\/a> worked for two weeks on a choreography that was presented last year in various theaters.<\/p>\n

The two artists appointed to this year\u2019s June session were Taiwan-born, New York-based composer Shiuan Chang<\/a> and Spanish-born, London-based artist Almudena Romero<\/a>. They were inspired by birds and local plants, respectively.<\/p>\n

\"A\"A<\/a>IDA\u2019s 2026 resident artists: Kang Chunhui, Almudena Romero, Matisse Mesnil and Shiuan Chang. Courtesy IDA<\/p>\n

Nominated by Kao, Chang\u2014who has only recently recovered after a health issue\u2014applied to work on a solo for contrabass flute (an instrument two octaves lower than a \u201cregular\u201d flute) and was adapting his performance art project People Concerto. His residency rhythm was reading in the morning, walking, composing and watching the sunset after dinner. His normal days working in his Queens home are typically 8-11 hours of composing and writing music for commissions. After having rejected academia and the conservatory system in favor of interacting with the general public, he organized concerts at galleries and museums in New York. He recently composed a violin concerto for the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, as well as a composition reproducing sounds of the forest for Cloudgate Dance Theater of Taiwan (soon touring in Berlin, Turin and Singapore), in addition to creating music to accompany patients at a psychiatric hospital in Taiwan throughout their day. During the residency, he was inspired by the high frequencies of two species of owls on the property\u2014\u201dthe sound of nature is very rich,\u201d he acknowledges\u2014as well as cicadas and various birdsongs. His signature is implementing a lot of glissando, pitch moving from one point to another point: a kind of migrating sound.<\/p>\n

Romero, an expert in 19th-century photography techniques who has taught and worked with museums on cyanotypes and wet collodion, was inspired by English polymath John Herschel<\/a>\u2019s findings that spearheaded the beginnings of color photography. As an environmentalist, she wanted to produce work without harmful chemicals like silver nitrate, instead creating with organic plant-based pigments and natural dyes, which are more fragile and ephemeral in their results (and less secure archivally) but without the risk of polluting. Sustainability and working with nature is something she\u2019s always been steeped in, coming from multi-generations of organic orange farmers in Valencia. \u201cI do think that my practice aligns very well with the ethos of seeds growing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She did two types of research during her residency: extracting pigments from plants in the summer garden, including purple cabbage, onion skin, beetroot, spinach and turmeric\u2014making the hues more alkaline with sodium bicarbonate or more acid with vinegar, to then see how colors vary when placing leaves (also from the garden) on a wooden surface covered with the juices of the pigments and left in the sun to create \u201cfossils of our time.\u201d She\u2019s also looking at the chromatic green tonalities and crop cycle growth of barley, rye and wheat grown in the same patch of soil, functioning as a kind of \u201cfarmed photograph,\u201d which she winkingly plants in former darkroom equipment. Her current exhibition in Toulouse, \u201cThe Eye,\u201d (part of her Farming Photographs series<\/a>) is a one-hectare installation of a human eye shaped into a French field using nothing but wheat and winter grasses.<\/p>\n

Marmiesse says Ebbio is \u201cour lab. It\u2019s super important for artists to have the safe space to be able to experiment. They are free to create\u2014and also to rest\u2026 We really believe artists are the solution to a lot of issues of the world.\u201d If that sounds hyperbolic\u2014and indeed IDA\u2019s mantra is a cheerleader-y one, \u201cart can do it\u201d\u2014she qualifies, \u201cthey allow all of us to see either things we don\u2019t want to see or can\u2019t see. Sometimes it\u2019s hard but it [can be] done with sincerity and ingenuity in a world where\u2026 money can smash everything. We want to protect that with this residency: making sure these voices are heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

More in artist residencies<\/p>\n

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