IDA is a four-year-old Parisian consultancy agency specializing in the development of art collections, exhibitions, ad hoc commissions and events, primarily connecting commercial institutions with artists. But founders Florence Marmesi, a French art consultant who came through Sotheby’s and Artcurial, and Camilla d’Alfonso, an Italian photographer, also launched a short-term summer residency in Italy as a distinct way to promote artists’ projects.
Since the agency’s founding, they’ve collaborated with players in the hospitality world — hotels, restaurants and real estate — to determine “how art can be injected into different aspects of businesses,” Marmesi says. It is necessary, on the one hand, to understand the needs of the company: “We make sure it is made within budget, on time, and deadlines are respected,” but also “we do a lot of teaching” – that is, educating organizations about artistic value and pushing their thinking to be more flexible.
(The two are regularly contacted by hotels saying: We have a wall, can you fill it? “We say, ‘This is not how to create an exhibition,’” Marmesi says. “We are not interior designers,” D’Alfonso emphasizes.)
On the other hand, the artist’s needs are no less important, Marmisi adds. “You have to pay the artist; they have to be nurtured… We, as a mediator, make sure that artists feel well understood and respected, that they have freedom and that they are able to do their art properly. We make sure that artists are not used as a marketing tool: we want their work to be appreciated.”
Throughout the year, they accompany their clients on art purchasing assignments, and support sponsorships and commissions. They have collaborated with the modeling agency Eileen Ford and Hoxton Hotels. They spend some of their time researching artists at art galleries, attending graduation shows at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and other schools like them, and making studio visits.
The agency’s name refers to the highest mountain on Crete, the most populous island in Greece, where Marmesi and d’Alfonso once traveled and where, according to legend, the Greek god Zeus was born. Although they are based in Paris, they travel frequently: “It is very important for us to be able to get out of the miniature Parisian world.”
Thinking beyond the microcosm of Paris led to the creation of the artist’s residency at Epibio, a restored 13th-century farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside near Siena and an hour’s drive from Florence (also not far from Castello di Amma, a winery that also hosts artists). Set amidst a particularly lush landscape rocked by volcanic geology, the program is open to artists worldwide regardless of medium. It is very short, taking place every two years, for two weeks for four artists across two summer sessions, but it comes with organisational, administrative and logistical support.
The partnership with Ebbio depends on the availability of the accommodation, as at other times it serves as a yoga retreat and a functional hotel. The residency is centered around an enduring theme, “Seeds Grow,” which supports experimentation and artistic development. The theme helps enhance the selection process, which is respectfully in keeping with the natural character of the seven hectares, given the abundance of olive trees, lavender fields, summer garden full of herbs and vegetables, and a host of chickens and geese. The focus on nature “is not to whitewash the environment, but because we want to give it value,” says Marmesi.
For the residency’s second year, the selection was overseen by a jury made up of international art figures, including Sotheby’s auctioneer Phyllis Cau, journalist George Nelson, gallerist Romero Paprocki – whose Parisian space will host the results of the residency in Paris in July 2027 – and the founders of IDA. They seek diversity in terms of milieu, nationality and career path, with each juror suggesting several candidates as well as reviewing external applications, which this year included 27 nationalities.
The first edition of the artists culminated in an exhibition in 2024 in Rome at the French Institute and in a hotel. Furthermore, Louise Findel held an exhibition in a deconsecrated church, transforming her typical black-and-blue palette into Tuscan orange and yellow. Jade Tang did a large-scale piece on Tuscan plants, which was shown at DRAC in France. Yoan Estivenin held a show at Art Paris inspired by the animals on the estate and objects found on the farm. Dancer Solian Rios worked for two weeks on designing the dances that were presented last year in various theaters.
The two artists appointed to this year’s June edition are Taiwan-born, New York-based composer Xuan Chang and Spanish-born, London-based artist Almudena Romero. They were inspired by birds and local plants, respectively.
Nominated by Kao, Zhang – who had recently recovered after a health issue – had applied to work on a contrabassoon flute solo (an instrument an octave lower than a “regular” flute) and was adapting his performance art project People’s Concerto. The rhythm of his stay was reading in the morning, walking, composing, and watching the sunset after dinner. His normal workdays at his home in Queens range from 8 to 11 hours composing and writing music for commissions. After rejecting academia and the conservatory system in favor of interaction with the general public, he organized concerts in New York galleries and museums. He has recently composed a Violin Concerto for the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, as well as a piece reproducing jungle sounds for the Cloudgate Dance Theater in Taiwan (soon touring in Berlin, Turin and Singapore), as well as composing music to accompany patients in a psychiatric hospital in Taiwan throughout their day. During his stay, he was inspired by the high frequencies of two species of owls on the property — “the sound of nature is so rich,” he admits — as well as the cicadas and various birdsong. His signature is a lot of glissando, the pitch moving from one point to another: a kind of migratory sound.
Romero, an expert in 19th-century photographic techniques who taught and worked with museums on bluetypes and wet collodion, was inspired by the findings of the English polymath John Herschel that led to the beginnings of color photography. As an environmentalist, she wanted to produce work without harmful chemicals like silver nitrate, instead using organic plant pigments and natural pigments, which are more fragile and ephemeral in their results (and less archivally safe) but without the risk of contamination. Sustainability and working with nature is something she has always been steeped in, coming from multiple generations of organic orange farmers in Valencia. “I think my practice aligns well with the ethos of seed farming,” she says.
She conducted two types of research during her residency: extracting pigments from plants in the summer garden, including purple cabbage, onion skins, beets, spinach, and turmeric—making the colors more alkaline with sodium bicarbonate or more acidic with vinegar, and then to see how the colors differed when the leaves (also from the garden) were placed on a wooden surface covered in pigment sap and left in the sun to create “fossils of our time.” She also looks at the green tones and crop cycle growth of barley, rye and wheat grown in the same patch of soil, acting as a kind of “cultivated image,” which she mysteriously cultivates in former darkroom equipment. Her current exhibition in Toulouse “The Eye” (part of it Agriculture photo series) is a one-hectare installation of a human eye in the shape of a French field using wheat and winter grasses.
Ibio is “our laboratory,” says Marmisi. “It’s very important for artists to have a safe space to be able to experiment. They are free to create – and also to rest… We truly believe that artists are the solution to many of the world’s problems.” If this sounds like an exaggeration – and indeed the International Art Foundation’s motto is an encouraging one, “Art can do it” – she qualifies, “It allows us all to see things we don’t want to see or can’t see. Sometimes it’s hard but it is.” [can be] It’s done with sincerity and finesse in a world where…money can destroy everything. “We want to protect that with this residency: make sure those voices are heard.”
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