Johanna Mirabel was born in Colombes (France) in 1991. She lives and works in Paris (France).
A 2019 graduate of the Beaux Arts de Paris, Johanna Mirabel is the winner of the tenth edition of the Bourse Révélation Emerige, entitled Hit Again, curated by Gaël Charbeau.
As such, her work will be presented in a solo exhibition at Galerie Nathalie Obadia in September 2024.
Johanna Mirabel's paintings depict figures occupying domestic spaces that are often open to a dreamlike exterior. The interiors in which the figures evolve draw on the artist's own memories, from Guyanese houses to New York brownstones from the Harlem Renaissance. Childhood memories and recent experiences interact at the heart of the pictorial surface, creating syncretic universes.
Her paintings explore the permeability of notions of interior and exterior. Lush vegetation enters the home to dress these enclosed, familiar spaces. The realistic treatment of bodies and faces contrasts with the sketched elements of décor, metaphors for evanescent and changing memories.
The porosity between the figure and its environment is reinforced by the use of colour: the skins blend seamlessly into the tones of the walls and floors, in shades of ochre, brown and red. For the artist, these colours are a point of anchorage or filiation with French Guiana, from the red earths of Creole to quotations from Tembé art, a colour palette that becomes even more dynamic in communion with the cerulean blues and cadmium yellows that the artist draws from the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler.
In 2023, Johanna Mirabel benefited from a residency at the Fondation H, which organised a solo exhibition for her. That same year, the artist took part in Immortelle at MO.CO (Montpellier, France), an exhibition designed to offer an ambitious panorama of young French figurative painting. She has taken part in a number of group exhibitions, notably at the Institut Français de Madrid (Spain), Hôtel de Craon, (La Rochelle), Villa Belleville (Paris, France), Manifesta (Lyon, France), and La Conciergerie, (Paris, France).
Johanna Mirabel's work has been included in renowned collections including the Fondation H (Antananarivo, Madagascar) and the Museum of African Art (Marrakech, Morocco), the Weissmann Family Collection (NYC, USA), the Green Family Art Foundation (Dallas, USA), the X Museum (Beijing, China), and the Underdog Collection (Italy).