IDA, a four-year-old Parisian consulting agency specialized in developing art acquisitions, exhibitions, custom commissions and events, primarily connecting corporate businesses and artists. But the founders Florence Marmiesse, a French art consultant who came up with Sotheby’s and Artcurial, and Camilla D’Alfonso, an Italian photographer, also presented a temporary summer residence in Italy as a different way to promote artists’ projects.
Since founding the organization, they have partnered with players in the hospitality world—hotels, restaurants, real estate—to, as Marmiesse puts it, determine “how creativity can be injected into various aspects of the company.” It is mandatory, on the other hand, to understand the needs of the company: “we make sure it is done on budget, it is done on time, deadlines are respected,” but also, “we do a lot of teaching”—which means teaching organizations about the importance of art and pushing their thinking to expand further.
(The two often communicate with hotels that say, we have a wall, can you fill it? “We’re like: that’s not really how it works to create a show,” says Marmiesse. D’Alfonso confirms: “We are not decorators.”)
On the other hand, Marmiesse adds, the needs of the artist are equally important. “You need to pay the artists; they need to be promoted … we, as a consultant, make sure that the artists feel understood and respected, that they have freedom and are able to do their art properly. We make sure that the artists are not used as a marketing tool: we want to appreciate their work.”
Throughout the year, they accompany their clients on art buying activities, earning patronage and commissions. They have worked with modeling agency Eileen Ford and Hoxton Hotels. Some of their time was spent scouting artists at art fairs, attending graduation exhibitions at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and other schools like them and visiting studios.
The center’s name refers to the highest mountain on Greece’s most populous island, Crete, where Marmiesse and D’Alfonso once traveled and where, according to legend, the Greek god Zeus was born. Although they are based in Paris, they both travel regularly: “it is very important for us to be able to get out of the microcosm of Paris.”
Thinking beyond the microcosm of Paris led to the creation of an artist residence in Ebbio, a restored 13th-century farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside near Siena and an hour’s drive from Florence (and not far from Castello di Ama, a winery that also hosts artists). Set within a particularly fertile subterranean area filled with volcanic geology, the program is open to artists from all over the world regardless of location. It is very short, it takes place every two years, two weeks each for four artists in two summer sessions, but it comes with legal, administrative and planning support.
The partnership with Ebbio is bound to the availability of the place, as it is sometimes a yoga hotel and an active hotel. The residency is based on the perennial theme, “Seeds Grow,” which strives for artistic exploration and development. The theme helps to refine the selection process, which respects the nature of the seven hectares, given the abundance of olive trees, lavender fields, a summer garden full of herbs and vegetables, and an array of chickens and geese. The emphasis on nature “is not a green wash, but actually because we want to give it its value,” says Marmiesse.
In the second year of the residency, the selection was led by a panel of international artists including Sotheby’s auctioneer Phyllis Kao, journalist George Nelson, gallerist Romero Paprocki—whose Paris venue will host the results of the Paris resident in July 2027—and two IDA founders. They want diversity in terms of medium, nationality and work, where each judge proposes a few people in addition to reviewing foreign applications, which this year includes 27 nationalities.
The first cycle of artists culminated in an exhibition in 2024 in Rome at the Institut Français and Hotel. Otherwise, Louise Vendel staged a show in the consecrated church, changing her usual black and blue palette to Tuscan orange and yellow. Jade Tang did a great piece about Tuscan flora, exhibited at DRAC in France. Yoan Estivenin had an exhibition at Art Paris inspired by local animals and farm items. Dancer Solian Rios worked for two weeks in the musical that was presented last year in different theaters.
The two artists selected for this year’s June session are Taiwan-born, New York-based composer Shiuan Chang and Spanish-born artist Almudena Romero. They are inspired by local birds and plants, respectively.
Chosen by Kao, Chang—recently surviving a health crisis—applied for solo practice on the contrabass flute (an instrument two octaves lower than the “regular” flute) and was working on his art project. People Concerto. His sedentary rhythm was reading in the morning, walking, composing and watching the sunset after dinner. His typical working days in his Queens home are usually 8-11 hours composing and writing music for commissions. After rejecting academics and the conservatory system that favors communication with the general public, he organized concerts in galleries and museums in New York. He recently composed a violin concerto for the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, and the repetitive forest sounds of Taiwan’s Cloudgate Dance Theater (soon to tour Berlin, Turin and Singapore), in addition to creating music that accompanies patients in a mental hospital in Taiwan throughout the day. During his stay, he was inspired by the high-pitched calls of two species of owls in the area—”the sound of nature is very rich,” he admits—as well as cicadas and various bird songs. His signature uses a lot of glissando, a pitch that moves from one point to another: a kind of migrating sound.
Romero, an expert in 19th-century photographic techniques who taught and worked with museums on cyanotypes and wet collodion, was inspired by the discoveries of English polymath John Herschel that led to the beginnings of color photography. As an environmentalist, he wanted to produce work without harmful chemicals such as silver nitrate, instead creating with plant pigments based on nature and natural dyes, more delicate and permanent in their effects (and less protected in the archive) but without the risk of contamination. Sustainability and working with the environment is something he has always been steeped in, coming from many generations of orange farmers in Valencia. “I think my practice fits well with the ethos of growing seeds,” she said.
He did two kinds of research during his stay: extracting color from plants in the summer garden, including purple cabbage, onion skin, beetroot, spinach and turmeric—making the hues more alkaline with sodium bicarbonate or more acidic with vinegar, to see how the colors differ when you put the leaves (also from the garden) on an abandoned wooden platform covered in the sun’s rays and “our times.” He also observes the chromatic green tonalities and the cyclical growth of barley, rye and wheat crops grown on the same plot of land, acting as a kind of “cultivated image,” which he planted by blinking in the former darkroom equipment. His current exhibition in Toulouse, “The Eye,” (part of his Agricultural Portraits series) is a one-hectare installation of a human eye shaped into a French field using nothing but wheat and winter grass.
Marmiesse says Ebbio is “our lab. It’s so important for artists to have a safe space to explore. They’re free to create—and to relax… We truly believe that artists are the solution to many of the world’s problems.” If that sounds hyperbolic—and IDA’s mantra is indeed cheerleader-y, “art can do it”—she’s right, “they allow us all to see things we don’t want to see or don’t see. Sometimes it’s hard but [can be] it is done honestly and wisely in a world where… money can destroy everything. We want to protect that with this residency: to make sure these voices are heard. “
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