ODDS ARE
2021.
80 x 90 x 80 cm.
clay, zinc sheet, brass sheet, blind rivets, bolts, nuts, washers.
Odds Are is the first sculptural element of an upcoming larger installation.
Like the artist's previous works, this installation brings together different temporalities.
The basket recalls the ancient African tradition of weaving and its purpose: a container allowing travel that protects intimacy. Each basket is woven in zinc, the material composing Parisian's roofs. They become protection and armour, storytellers of bodies' narratives.
These narrations are inspired by the fantasized world of Osiris. The mummified being having accessed to the afterlife, free from its containers that have allowed its conservation, explores the integrity of the seven elements that compose itself: Ba (the energy of movement), Djet (the body envelope), Ka (the static energy), Akh (the transcendence), Name (the recognition), Ib (the heart as the seat of memory, thought and consciousness), Shaï (the temporality), Shout (the shadow).
This installation continues the artist's research on corporeality and the mechanisms of instinct and how the permeability of the body is altered by mental mechanisms.
Photos credit: Pablo Saguez
LA VERTICALE DU BÂILLEMENT
2020.
32 x 17 x 12 cm.
clay.
Video credits: Pablo Saguez + Yohann Vorillon
Photos credit: Pablo Saguez
TOO DIMENSIONAL
2020.
80 x 87 x 24 cm.
paper, glue, pigments.
Too Dimensional questions the dimensionality of our bodies.
The body represented is sculpted as a relief, belonging to flatness. The distortion creates an anamorphosis. It evokes a past action of the body trying to extract itself, calcined in time and space, in between flatness and volume.
Photos credit: Pablo Saguez
WAHSHANI
2019.
82 x 130 x 53 cm.
aluminium sheets, oxidised zinc and steel sheets, copper sheets, fired clay, jesmonite, acrylic and oil paint, chive, screws, washers, nuts, castanets of my childhood.
"Wahshani" means « I miss you » in egyptian arabic (addressed to a female entity).
This sculpture questions the temporal permeability of our bodies with each other and with their environment. It tells the tension between the different identities of the artist, born in France from Egyptian parents, the plurality of the "home" entities generated a latent lack for one or the other. A mask of Dalida, an icon of femininity of the artist's childhood is found hooded resting in the remains of an armour/body trying to interact with a contemporary architectural object, a bodies abacus.
EL BINT
2019.
65 x 54,5 x 15 cm.
Jesmonite, aluminium sheets, copper sheets, oxidized steel sheets, coral pearls, brass screws, a safety pin, embroidery threads, buttons, glue, oil paint, acrylic and gouache.
« El bint » meaning "the daughter" in arabic.
El bint merges different speed of temporalities. From her original image linked to the Fayoum portraits to its contemporary relation to femininity and masculinity, she attempts to stay still in the context of our contemporary hopes and constraints.
THE OFFICER
2018.
75 x 36 x 20 cm.
fired terracotta clay, air dry clay, aluminium sheets, blind rivets, automotive wires, concrete, artifcial rotted moss, a bobby pin.
Referencing Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony (1919), The Officer is a self satire portrait of the artist's own utopia.
APPEL ENREGISTRÉ
2018.
177 x 150 x 70 cm.
aluminium sheets, blind rivets, bolts, nuts, washers, automotive wire, sandpaper, anti-slip tape, foam, lighting filter gel, fired terracotta, air dry clay, ribbon, thread, embroidery thread, safety pins, paint, prints, punched pockets, a bobby pin, mirror, performer, video.
Appel enregistré acts as a shattered body cynically enjoying the thrill and pain of the repetition of a static path. Lying in the wait for an ending materialisation to its own utopia, it develops a normative behaviour towards its own flaws.
Different characters share their responsibility in this quest for achievement :
Utopia :
Realised, finally,
I am matter so I exist,
without this body.
I set myself free,
to please and pleasure me,
grow free.
The Mind :
We are alike,
I mean.. you are me or me are you,
you play me or I play you,
well.. in the end, I don't know,
this is the way I am,
I, it's all I live.
The Spine :
I am alone. Condemned.
Jiggling on their prayers.
They don't hear me anymore.
They all fools think they don't need me.
Five Left Toes :
We have taken a decision,
twenty-seven years ago,
to stick to this ship no matter what!
Our shadows are getting thicker,
they want to get rid of us!
a Human :
waiting
In front of the
elevator's doors
my call flashes
I know all I know
it's coming for me
to take me
to destination
self realisation
impatient I pray
blue to reach red
the moment waits
stretches my passionate impatience
impatient passion
still hoping
for it to come
I dance
Performers: Sarah White, Marie Aimee Fattouche
Photos credit: Alessandra Sormani
Video credit: Paolo Capelli
UBUNTU
2016.
500 x 500 x 300 cm.
aluminium sheets, steel tubes, fabric, scaffold clamps, blind rivets, bolts, nuts, washers, metal wire, pulley wheels, performers.
Ubuntu, meaning literally 'human-ness” in Nguni language is a Southern African philosophy relying on the inter-connectedness of the whole.
By pushing the doors to enter the room, the unconscious viewer chooses without noticing to surrender to the proposed path. As the structure awakes, natural physics' law of gravity and motion operate in synchronicity and exert a balanced tension between polarities. Thrown back in a unified field, the performer contributes involuntarily to the whole.
The structure arises as an absolute metaphysical intelligence being activated by the unification of the human to the All.
Photo credit: Alessandra Sormani