IN CONVERSATION WITH INÈS LONGEVIAL

interview NATALIE GAL

The Dior Lady Art campaign has been on the scene for an entire decade, a project where artists are invited to reinterpret this true classic, elevating it with the emblematic aesthetics of their own work. It’s a celebration of constantly new bursts of creativity, because what is fashion, if not endless reinvention? I spoke with one of the artists, Inès Longevial, a French painter whose style is fresh, intimate, and honest, and undoubtedly a perfect addition to the project.

What is your earliest, most vivid memory of art, the first encounter that shaped your sense of what art could be?

I believe my first wonder at art was nature itself. Before museums, before paintings, I learned to read art in living things. As a child, I would gather tiny, fragile empty snail shells from the soil of my garden and make faces with them by gluing them onto paper. That was my first studio.

You have family ties to the Basque Country. Has that Spanish heritage and cultural setting found its way into your work?

Not really, no. I didn’t grow up in the Basque Country. But I did grow up in the Southwest, and its sky marked me forever. Vast, ever-changing, sometimes heavy with storms, sometimes an intense blue. It was like a living canvas above my childhood. I still carry that Southwestern sky within me. It gave my eye a taste for light that is immense, dramatic, always in motion.

Do you draw inspiration from the great artists of history, or is there a particular aesthetic era that resonates with you most?

Of course I admire the masters, but I’m wary of imitation. I listen more to what their breath has left inside me. The history of art is a long conversation, I don’t enter it as a student, but as an interlocutor.

Your work often centers on powerful depictions of femininity and womanhood, pieces that are raw, honest, and deeply real. What do you seek to explore and express through this focus in your art?

We are neither unreal madonnas nor docile dolls, but bodies, voices, desires, angers. I seek to show what burns beneath the skin, dignity and pain, intoxication and patience.

This collaboration with Dior is significant. What does it mean to you personally, and how has the process unfolded?

Working with Dior means engaging in a dialogue between two forms of art, fashion and visual art. It was more of a meeting than a project: a mutual listening, where my work found an echo in a shared desire to create something alive, playful, that does not fit neatly into the grand narrative.

Now that you live in Paris, a city defined by art and culture, how has that environment shaped your perspective as an artist?

Paris is a demanding city. It exhausts you, but it also nourishes you. In its streets, I hear a thousand languages, I see a thousand silhouettes. It is a constant school of observation.

The art world has always been highly competitive. For you, what does it truly mean to stand out as an artist?

To stand out is not to shout louder than others. It is to persist in unfolding your work, even if it seems too discreet, too improper, or not fashionable. The artist who truly stands out is the one who leaves a trace, intimate and indelible, that endures.

CREDITS
photography MARION BERRIN