Danysz Gallery announces Empress, a solo exhibition by Yseult Digan, aka YZ. A leading figure in contemporary urban art, YZ takes over the gallery to crown ten years of work dedicated to her Empress series, she exhibits works retracing the different stages of her series, which began in 2015 at the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing.

From the very beginning, YZ has pursued an immersive, well-documented, and profoundly human artistic approach. Her work is rooted in the field: she immerses herself in cultures, connects with communities, and questions heritage and identity. From her experiences in Ivory coast, Colombia, Thailand, Morocco, or France, she creates portraits of powerful women, always rendered in black and white, dressed in traditional garments, adorned with ancestral jewellery, and embodying the richness of cultures too often overlooked.

Her Empresses are not only icons, but real, inspiring, self-assured women. Their gazes, painted with striking intensity, confront the viewer. They inhabit the space, taking over the walls from floor to ceiling. By giving them an imperial stature, YZ disrupts our perception: these women, so often rendered invisible in public spaces, are here portrayed as queens, guides and keepers of memory.

More than a series of portraits, Empress is a tribute to those who carry, heal, connect, and pass on. It is also a fully realized artistic process: an anthropological exploration, self-sufficient production using reclaimed materials - old doors, rusted metal, driftwood - ecological commitment, and radical aesthetics. The choice of black and white, sometimes infused with sepia-brown tones, goes straight to the essence, heightening the gravity and power of the figures depicted. Nothing diverts attention from their gaze. The presence of these portraits is intense, the gaze of the women equally intense.