Obras - Galeria ADN

Transcription

Obras - Galeria ADN

c/ Enrique Granados, 49, SP. 08008 Barcelona
T. (+34) 93 451 0064, [email protected]
http://www.adngaleria.com
Mounir Fatmi
Obras/Works
Biografía/Biography
Bibliografía/Bibliography
Textos / Texts
Prensa / Press
Obras/Works
Instalaciones y esculturas /
Installations and sculptures
(selección/selection)
The history is not mine
2013-2014
Typewriter, hammers, A4 paper on office desk, video on flatscreen, Bilboquet game, typed sheets.
Edition of 5
Place Mehdi Ben Barka
2014
Sculpture: enamelled plate
50x50cm
170 cm height of the post
Edition of 5
Civilisation,
2013
Installation, 30,5 x 42,5 x 16 cm.
Edition of 5
L’année zéro,
2011
Sculpture, 120 x 160 x 5 cm.
Unique piece
500 mètres de silence
2005
Coaxial antenna cable, pedestal, Plexiglas, sticker "500 meters of silence“
Edition of 5
Jusqu'à preuve du contraire (In the absence of evidence to the contrary)
2012
fluorescent tubes, size may vary.
Exhibition view from Intranquillités, B.P.S.22, Charleroi, 2012
L'histoire est à moi!
2012
Light projection
Exhibition view from History is Mine!, Le Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, 2012.
Pétrole, Pétrole, Pétrole, Pétrole (Oil, Oil, Oil, Oil)
2012
250 x 300 cm, igals and painting
Exhibition view from Oriental Accident, Lombard Freid Projects, New York, 2012.
Le Mur I (The Wall)
2011
56,5 x 598 x 207, VHS, tapes.
Exhibition view from The Great Babylon Circus, Mu, Eindhoven, 2011
Assassins
2010
26 water pipes
on plinth: 150 x 130 cm x 20 cm
Edition of 5
Oriental Accident (Oriental Accident )
2011
50 x 336 x 226, sound system, speakers carpets on a wooden structure.
Exhibition View from Terrible Beauty: Art, Crisis, Change & the Office of Non-Compliance,
Dublin Contemporary 2011, Dublin.
Les Printemps Perdus (The Lost Springs)
2011
2 brooms of 3 meters, 22 flags of the Arab League.
Mehr Licht!
2009-2011
copy machines, neon lights.
Exhibition view from Intranquillités, B.P.S.22, Charleroi, 2012.
Les Temps Modernes, Une Histoire de la Machine (Modern Times, A History of the Machine)
2009-2010
videos, sound, saw blades in steel.
Exhibition view from Told, Untold, Retold, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha
Maximum Sensation
2010
skateboards, prayer rugs.
collection Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2010
Intervention
2010
saw blades in the wall, site specific installation.
Art Dubai, Paradise Row Gallery, Dubai, 2010
Assassins
2010
hookas of various size.
Seeing is believing, Galerie Hussenot, Paris, 2010
Ghosting
2009
VHS, tapes, copy machines, video, sentence painted in black mate acrylic,
around 1500 x 800 x 500 cm. The spectacle of the everyday, Xth Lyon Biennial, 2009.
Entre les lignes (Between the lines)
2008
jumping poles, painting, 4 meters wide, size may vary.
Artforum Berlin, Galerie Conrads, Berlin, 2008
Les Monuments (The Monuments)
2008-2009
helmets, philophers names, around 150 x 150 x 90 cm.
Fuck Architects: chapter III, First Brussels Biennial, 2008.
Collection Darat el Funun, the Khalid Shoman Foundation
Les monuments (The Monuments)
2008
5 ceramic helmets
Each helmet: 35 x 25 x 17 cm
Edition of 5
Babel House / Empire
2008
VHS, brooms, black flags, wood panel, lights, around 150 x 150 x 300 cm
After the Fall
2007
jumping pole, table of metal, mirror
Edition of 5
Without History
2007
29 jumping poles, excerpts from the “Art of War”
Each pole: 4 meters long, 10 cm of diameter
Unique piece
La forêt de Mondrian (Mondrian's forest )
2007
14 jumping poles, 3 neons, 400 x 150 cm.
In search of paradise, Galerie Ferdinand van Dieten, Amsterdam, 2007
Gardons Espoir (Keeping Faith)
2007
VHS,tapes, mirrored floor, leather belts size may vary.
The Armory Show, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York, 2009
Va et attends moi (Leave and wait for me)
2007
VHS, tapes, wall painting, black mate acrylic.
Double stratégie (Double strategy )
2007
VHS, tapes, wall painting, black mate acrylic.
Skyline
2007
VHS, tapes, 800 x 365 cm.
Fuck Architects: chapter III, FRAC Alsace, Sélestat, 2009
Underneath
2007
wood table, 160 x 90 x 75 cm.
Fuck Architects: chapter III, FRAC Alsace, Sélestat, 2009
J'aime l'Amérique, hommage à Jacques Derrida (I like America, tribute to Jacques Derrida )
2007
painted jumping poles, ladders in metal, size may vary.
Exhibition view from Collector, Lille3000, Lille 2011
Sortir de l'Histoire (Out of History)
2005-2006
posters, Archives from the FBI, video.
With the courtesy of the P. Huey Newton Foundation. America, Beirut Art Center, Beirut, 2009
Le minimalisme est capitaliste (Minimalism is capitalist)
2006
easels,painting, sentence, circular saw, posters, neon light, size may vary.
Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, 2006
500 mètres de silence (500 meters of silence)
2004-2005
coaxial antenna cable, saw-horses, white textile, wall painting, soundtrack.
Ecrans noirs, centre d'art contemporain intercommunal, Istres, 2005
Ecran noir
2004-2005
blank VHS, variable sizes
Connexions 05: Conspiration (Connection 05: Conspiracy) – from the “Connections” series
2003 – 2009
books, connection cables, size may vary.
Miami art basel, Lombard Freid Project, Miami, 2007.
Collection Rosenblum & Friends, Paris
Le langage des oiseaux (Birds language)
2001-2004
mixed media, sound installation,video transmission, size may vary.
Comprendra bien qui comprendra le dernier, Le Parvis, Ibos, 2004
Save Manhattan 01
2004
table, books published after Sept. 11th, 2001, strings, spotlight, around 150 x 90 cm.
Comprendra bien qui comprendra le dernier, Le Parvis, Ibos, 2004, collection du FNAC
Save Manhattan 02
2005
table, saw-horses, VCR, tapes.
Uit de landen van ondergaande zon, arti e amicitae, Amsterdam, 2005
Save Manhattan 03
2007
Sound architecture, speakers, sound system, soundtrack, light and shadow
500 x 250 x 100 cm. 52ème Biennale de Venise, 2007, Collection Hessel Foundation
Save Manhattan 03
2005
table, VCR, tapes
Pique-nique sous embargo (Picnic under embargo )
2003
carpet, table, tableware.
Espacios mestizos, 2nd international contemporary art meeting,Îles canaries, 2003
Face au silence (In the face of silence)
2002
figurine, digital print on tarpaulin, video, Coma manifesto, size may vary.
Images and power, espacio C, Camargo. collection Espacio C, Camargo, Spain
The Machinery
2011
Painting on circular raw blade
70 cm diameter
Unique piece
Maximum sensation 23
2015
Sculpture: skateboard with prayer rugs
82 x 24 x 12 cm
Series of unique pieces
Maximum sensation 16
2015
Sculpture: skateboard with prayer rugs
82 x 24 x 12 cm
Series of unique pieces
Compositions Nº2
2012
collage with prayer rugs on canvas
40 x 40 cm
Compositions Nº5
2012
collage with prayer rugs on canvas
40 x 40 cm
Mécanisation 5
2010
Collage made of prayer rugs on plywood and plexiglas showcase
70 cm of diameter
Unique piece
Obras/Works
Video (selection)
Sleep - Al Naim
2011
France, 6 hours, HD, B&W, stereo
La Jambe Noire de l'Ange (The Angel's Black Leg)
2011
France, 9 min 48, SD, 4/3, B&W, stereo.
From the exhibition the Angel's Black Leg, galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf
Archi Sickness
2011
France, 8 min 06, SD, 16/9, color, stereo
Les Temps Modernes, une Histoire de la Machine (Modern Times, a History of the Machine)
2010
France,video installation,15 min, HD, B&W, stereo
L'Homme du Livre (The Man of the Book)
2010
France,video installation,15 min, SD, 4/3, B&W, stereo
Architecture Now! Etat des lieux (series of 15 videos)
2010
France, HD, color, stereo, different running times
Mixologie (Mixology)
2010
France, 11 min 04, HD, color, stereo
Mohammed Ali, Le Labyrinthe (Muhammad Ali, The Labyrinth)
2010
Beautiful Language
2010
France, 16 min 30, SD, 4/3, B&W, stereo
Save Manhattan
2008-2009
France, 8 min 37, SD, 4/3, B&W, stereo.
Couleurs de Déportation (Colors of Deportation)
2009
France, 5 min, SD, 4/3, color, stereo
Forget
2006-2009
View from Narracje 4, Gdansk, 2012
Memorandum
2009
Tracked Memory
2006
Histoire de l'histoire (History of history)
2006
Horizontal fall
Started in 2000
France, 12 min, SD, 4/3, color, stereo
L'homme sans cheval, mouvement (The Man Without a Horse, movement
2004 – 2005
trilogy, France, 10 min 30, SD, 4/3, color, stereo
Faiseurs de pluie (Rain making)
2004
Morocco, France, 6 min 10, SD, 4/3, color, stereo
Dieu me pardonne (May God forgive me)
2001-2004
Commerciale
2004
Manipulation
2004
Festin, hommage à William Burroughs (Feast tribute to William Burroughs)
2002
Festin, hommage à William Burroughs (Feast tribute to William Burroughs)
2002
Fragments et solitude (Fragments and solitude )
1999
Morocco, France, 19 min 05, SD, 4/3, color, stereo
Face, les 99 noms de dieu (Face, the 99 different names of God )
1999
Maroc, France, 9 min 24, SD, 4/3, color, no sound.
Fragile
1997
Maroc, 6 min 44, SD, 4/3, B&W, stereo
Obras/Works
Photographs (selection)
¿Who is Joseph Anton?
2012-2013
70 x 50 cm each & 20 x 30 cm, photomontage
Print on silver paper
Edition of 5
Art of War
2014
print on baryta paper
32 x 100 cm
Edition of 5
The dynamic Geography of History
2006-2009
digital prints
90 x 60 cm
Edition of 5
Sans Histoire (Without History)
2012
Edition of 5
Le Jeu (The Game) – series of 9 photographs
2012
40 x 50 cm
Edition of 5
Casablanca Circles – series of 12 photographs
2012
90 x 120 cm
Edition of 5
La Jambe Noire de l'Ange (The Angel's Black Leg)
2011
triptych, prints on Duratrans, lightboxes
70 x 100 cm each.
Edition of 5
From the exhibition the Angel's Black Leg, galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf.
Technologia N°1
2011
print on Durantrans, circular lightbox, 75 cm.
From the exhibition the Angel's Black Leg, galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf
Porte-drapeau (Flag bearer)
2010
inkjet prints, serie of 4 photographs
50 x 75 cm each
Edition of 5
Noir sur noir (Black on black)
Serie started in 2009
inkjet print, aludibond
135 x 100 cm
Edition of 5
The Rest, Del libro y su emoción
2004
Inkjet print
103 x 163 cm
Edition of 5
Casse-tête pour musulman modéré (Brainteaser for moderate muslim)
2009
9 inkjet prints
50 x 50 cm. each
Edition of 3
Contamination
Series started in 2009
various size
Les Monuments (The Monuments)
Series started in 2009
series of 4 inkjet prints.
Balla Drama, Paradise Row Gallery, London, 2009
J'aime l'Amérique (I Like America)
2006
Diptych, 105 x 160 cm each.
Traversia, CAAM, Canary Island, 2008
Dieu est grand (God is great)
2006
various size
Connexions (Connections)
inkjet prints, 105 x 160 cm
L'évolution ou la mort (Evolution or Death)
2004
inkjet print, various size.
First Haifa Biennial, Haifa, 2010.
Mal de frontières (Border Sickness)
2001
triptych, silver prints, various size
Coupe Carrée (Square Cut)
2000
triptych
Témoins (Witnesses)
photographs, silver print, various size
Obras/Works
Works on paper (selection)
Dead or Alive
2008
acrylic on Arche paper
120 x 80 cm
Unique piece
Dead or Alive
2008
Silk screen print on paper
120 x 80 cm
Edition of 30
Charlie Hebdo
2011
Inkjet print, black frame
39,5 x 27,5 cm
Edition of 50
Biografía/Biography
Mounir Fatmi (Morocco, 1970)
Solo shows
2015
Metavilla - Remiz Wall, curated by Caroline Corbal. Bordeaux, France
Modern Times, Miami Beach Urban Studios / College of Architecture + The Arts. Miami, USA
Permanent Exiles, MAMCO, Geneve, Switzerland
C'est encore la nuit, Institut Français de Meknès, Prison Kara, Meknès, Morocco
Constructing Illusion. Analix Forever Gallery. Geneva, Switzerland
Darkening Process, curated by Alpesh Pater. Miami Beach Urban Studios Gallery, Florida International
University, Miami Beach, USA
2014
Light & Fire, ADN Galeria. Barcelona, Spain
Art of War, ADN Platform. Barcelona, Spain
Walking on the Light, CCC, Tours, France
They were blind, they only saw images, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, France
Kissing Circles, Analix Forever Gallery, Genève, Switzerland
2013
La ligne droite, Galerie Fatma Jellal, Casablanca, Morocco
Le voyage de Claude Levi Strauss, Casablanca, Morocco
History Is Not Mine, Paradise Row, London, UK
2012
Suspect Language, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town
Kissing Circles, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, USA
Oriental Accident, Lombard Freid Projects, New York, USA
2011
The Angel's Black Leg, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany
Between the lines, Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France
Without Anesthesia, Analix Forever, Geneva, Switzerland
Megalopolis, AKBank Sanat, Istanbul, Turkey
Architecture Now!, Espace Culturel Le Chaplin, Mantes La Jolie , France
Linguaggi Costituenti, Fondazione Collegio San Carlo, Modena, Italy
2010
Seeing is believing, Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France
The Beautiful Language, Galerie Ferdinand van Dieten, Amsterdam, The Netherlands s
Underneath, Kiosque Raspail, Ivry-sur-Seine, France
2009
Fuck architects: chapter III, FRAC Alsace, Séléstat, France
minimalism is capitalist, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany
Hard Head, Tank TV, Web-based project
2008
Fuck architects: chapter III, Biennale de Brussels, Belgium
Fuck architects : chapter II, Centre d'art contemporain Le Creux de l'Enfer, Thiers, France
Connexion 02, galerie Delacroix, Tanger, Morocco
2007
Fuck Architects : chapter I, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York, USA
In search of paradise, Ferdinand van Dieten gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands s
Something is possible, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
J’aime l’Amérique, la maison rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris, France
Sans histoire, Musée Picasso, la guerre et la paix, Vallauris, France
2006
Tête dure hard head, bank galerie, Paris, France
Face, les 99 noms de dieu, Galerie Saint Séverin, Paris, France
2005
Bad connexion, galerie saw gallery, Ottawa, Canada
Ecrans noirs, Centre d'art contemporain intercommunal, Istres, France
L'évolution ou la mort, centre culturel Marcel Pagnol, Fos-sur-Mer, France
Commissariat projet le reste, Tour Eiffel, Bourges, France
2004
Comprendra bien qui comprendra le dernier, Centre d'art contemporain Le Parvis, Ibos, France
Survival signs, oeuvres video 1990-2004, vidéokiosque 01, Pau, France
Dieu me pardonne, Bureau d'Art et de Recherche, Roubaix, France
Jusqu'au bout de la poussière, Espace des arts, Colomiers, France
2003
2002
Obstacles, next flag, Migros Museum, Zürich, Switzerland
Ovalprojet, CAC Le Chaplin, Mantes la Jolie, France
Group shows
2015
I Love You, curated by Rebecca Russo. Fondazione VIDEOINSIGHT, Turin, Italy
Les Fragments de l'Amour, curated by Léa Bismuth. CAC La Traverse, Alfortville, France
Untitled Miami Art Fair. ADN Galeria’s booth. Miami, U.S.
Who said that tomorrow doesn’t exist?, 1st TRIO Biennial, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Seins à Dessein, Espace Arlaud, Geneva, Switzerland
Tolerance, The 2nd International Bodrum Biennial , Bodrum, Turkey
Le monde selon…, curated by Sylvie Zavatta. FRAC Franche Comté, Besançon, France
Unprotected Zone, curated by Raphie Etgar. Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel
The Migrant (Moving) Image, curated by Nathanja van Dijk. A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Je me souviens du génocide arménien, curated by Galerie Sobering. CAC La Traverse, Alfortville, France
Jameel Prize 3, The National Library, Singapore.
Global Control and Censorship, curated by Bernhard Serexhe & Lívia Rózsás. ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany
Sublime de Voyage, une biennale en camion - Un hommage à James Lee Byars, curated by Paul Ardenne.
Biennale art nOmad - Off Venice Biennial, Italy
Telling Time, curated by Bisi Silva, Yves Chatap & Antawan Byrd. 10èmes Rencontres de Bamako - Biennale
panafricaine de Photographie.
ArtInternational Istanbul, ADN Galeria booth. Istanbul, Turkey
General Indisposition, an Essay about Fatigue, curated by Martí Peran. Fabra I Coats, Barcelona, Spain
5th Thessaloniki Biennale, Thessaloniki, Greece
A republic of art - French regional collections of contemporary art, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland
Face 2 Face, curated by Leila Voight. Festival A-Part, Les Baux-de-Provence, France
Corps recomposés. Greffe et art contemporain, curated by Barbara Denis-Morel. Avranches, France
HIWAR, AMOCA, the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art. Sakhnin, Israel
A l'ombre d'Eros, une histoire d'amour et de mort, curated by Marie Deparis & Magali Briat-Philippe.
Monastère Royal de Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, France
Traces of the Future, MMP+, The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts, Marrakech, Morocco
Handle with care, Ostrale'015, Dresden, Germany
ArtBrussels, ADN Galeria booth. Brussels, Belgium
Diverse works: Director's Choice, 1997-2015, The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Jameel Prize 3, Sharjah Museum of islamic Art, Sharjah, UAE
You love me, you love me not, Galeria Municipal do Porto, Porto, Portugal
Measuring the immeasurable, curated by Iciar Sagarminaga (a3bandas). Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid, Spain
Les 25 ans de la Galerie du Tableau, Galerie Saint Laurent, Marseille, France
Detrás del Muro II, La Bienal de la Habana (Collateral event), curated by Juan Delgado and Orlando Britto. La
Habana, Cuba
Between the Pessimism of the Intellect and the Optimism of the Will, 5th Thessaloniki Biennale. Thessaloniki,
Greece
Fotofest 2014: View from the Inside, Abu Dhabi Music & Art Festival, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Passages, parages; visages, paysages, Les nouvelles créations artistiques au Maroc, Bank Al-Maghrib
Museum, Rabat, Morocco
ARCO Madrid, ADN Galeria. Madrid, Spain
2014
Between Us, Video art from the Middle East and North Africa in a global world. Etopia, Centro de Arte y
Tecnología. Zaragoza, Spain
Helvetica Zebra, curated by Donatella Bernardi, STATION. Beirut, Lebanon
The Sublime: Contemporary Works from the Collection, curated by Kathryn Weir, Qagoma. Brisbane, Australia
1914-2014. Cent ans de création au Maroc, curated by Mohamed Rachdi, MMVI Musée Mohammed VI. Rabat
Jameel Prize 2013. Moscow, Russia
Le Maroc Contemporain, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin & Moulim El Aroussi, Institut du Monde Arabe. Paris
Memory, Place, Desire: Contemporary Art of the Maghreb and the Maghrebi Diaspora, curated by Carol Solomon,
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford college, Haverford, USA
Ne pas se séparer du monde, 5ème Orient d’art Express, Oujda, Morocco
A Moment Forever, Analix Forever, Geneva, Switzerland
Les Désastres de la Guerre, Festival A-Part, Les Beaux-de-Provence, France
La Route Bleu, Musée National Adrien Dubouch, Limoges, France
Accomplices and Witnesses, ADN Galería. Barcelona, Spain.
The Disappearance of Fireflies, Prison Sainte-Anne, Avignon, France.
Songs of Loss and Songs of Love, curated by Sam Bardaouil & Till Fellrath, Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju,
South Korea
Jameel Prize 2013, Hermitage-Kazan Museum, Kazan, Tatarstan.
Giving Contours to Shadows, curated by Elena Agudio & Bonaventure Ndikung. N.B.K., Berlin, Germany.
The Sea is my land, curated by Emanuela Mazzonis & Francesco BonnamiTriennale di Milano, Milano, Italy.
Colonia Apocrifa, curated by Juan Guardiola.MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon, Spain.
Body and Soul: New International Ceramics, Museum of Art and Design, New York, USA
Spot on: Mounir Fatmi, Stiftung Museum, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Arab Contemporary: Architecture, Culture & Identity, Louisiana - Museum of Modern Art, Louisiana, USA.
Des choses en moins, des choses en plus. Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France.
ARCO Madrid, ADN Galeria booth. Madrid, Spain
Nass Belgica - L'immigration marocaine en Belgique, Centre culturel Le Botanique, Bruxelles, Belgium.
Between two stools, one book, Villa Empain-Fondation Boghossian, Bruxelles
Choices - works on paper, Conrads, Düsseldorf
Pourquoi écrire?, Galerie Sobering, Paris
The Pink Spy, MUHKA, Antwerp, Belgium
Views from inside, Fotofest Biennial 2014, Houston, U.S.A
Surfacing, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
African Way, Chapelle de la Visitation - espace d'art contemporain, Thonon-les-Bains, France
IMPACT, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
2013
Pulse Miami, ADN Galeria booth. USA.
De la résonance du cri littéraire dans les arts visuels, 1st BIAC, Biennale Internationale d'Art Contemorain de la
Martinique, France.
La Route Blue, Boghossian Foundation, Ville Empain. Brussels.
Body and Soul: New International Ceramics, Art and Design Museum, New York, USA.
The sea is my land, MAXXI, Spazio D. Rome, Italy.
Volta 9, ADN Galería Basel, Switzerland.
If you were to live here... 5th Auckland Triennial, New Zeland.
25 ans de créativité arabe" curated by Ehab Ellaban, Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, UAE
"The progress of love" curated byKristina Van Dyke and Bisi Silva at The Menil Collection, Houston, USA
Art Brussels, ADN Galería, Brussels, Belgium.
"Ici, ailleur" curated by Juliette Laffon, Marseilla 2013 European Capital of the culture, France
ARCO Madrid 2013, ADN Galería, Spain
Le Quartier, Quimper, France
2012
Intranquillités, B.P.S.22, Charleroi, Belgique
Machines - Les Formes du mouvement, Manif d'art 6 - La biennale de Québec, Québec, Canada
L'histoire est à moi!, Le Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse
Unrest, Apexart, curated by Natalie Mustuata, New York, USA
Constested Territories, Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, Long Island, New York, USA
Systems and Patterns, International Centre of Graphic Arts, curated by Nevenka Sivavec Ljubljana,
Slovenia
La Plasticité du Langage - part 1, Fondation Hippocrène, curated by Jeanette ,Zwingenberger
Paris, France
Le Christ dans l'Art, Gingko'Art, espace culturel, curated by Gauthier Pierre Pontoise, France
L'histoire est à moi!, Le Printemps de Septembre, curated by Paul Ardenne, Toulouse, France
Carte blanche à La Cinémathèque de Tanger, Jeu de Paume, Paris, France
Machines - Les Formes du mouvement, Manif d'art 6 - La biennale de Québec, Québec, Canada
Transit, Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador da Bahía, Brasil
Lady Dior as seen by, Wako Namiki, Tokyo, Japan
Le Monde comme il bouge, La Brasserie, Foncquevillers, France
In Other Words, NGBK, Berlin, Germany
Le Depays, 4th Marrakech Bienniale, Marrakech, Morocco
Seules les pierres sont innocentes, Galerie Talmart, Paris, France
Advance/...Notice, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Drawings, Paradise Row Gallery, London, United Kingdom
Détournements, Keitelman Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
Home Where, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York, USA
Beyond Memory, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel
Horizons Croisés, 34e Moussem Culturel International d'Assilah, Assilah, Morocco
Contemporary Creation and Social Dynamics, Biennial of Dakar, Dakar, Senegal
2011
The Future of a promise, Magazzini del Sale, 54e Venice Biennial , Venice, Italy
Unfolding Tales, Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA
Told, Untold, Retold, Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar
A Rock and a Hard Place, 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale, Thessaloniki, Greece
The Last exhibition at Galerie Ferdinand van Dieten, Galerie Ferdinand van Dieten, Amsterdam
Concrete Islands, Analix Forever in Paris, Paris, France
Miragen, Museu Nacional do Conjunto Cultural da Republica, Brasilia, Brazil
Miragen, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Sao Paulo, Brasil
Frontières, rencontres de Bamako, Fondation Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal
Word of Mouth, Biennial of Athens, Athens, Greece
After the Rage, Beton7, Athens, Greece
Meeting Point 6: Locus Agonistes - Practices and Logics of the civic, Argos Center for Art and Media,
Brussels , Belgium
La Ville et leurs imaginaires, Fondation Blachère, Apt, France
Images affranchies, Ancienne agence de la Banque du Maroc, Marrakech, Morocco
Fluxus-African Contemporary Art, Chiesa dei Santi Carlo e Agata, Reggio Emilia, Italy
Inspiration Dior, Musée des Beaux Arts Pouchkine, Moscow, Russia
Pax, Fondation Frances, Senlis, France
Meeting Point 6: Locus Agonistes - Practices and Logics of the civic, Beirut art Center, Beirut, Lebanon
The Pavement and the Beach, Paradise Row, London, United Kingdom
Une terrible beauté est né, 11e Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, France
The Great Babylon Circus, Mu, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Working for change, project for the Moroccan pavilion, 54e Venice Biennial , Appartement 22, Rabat,
Morocco
West end?, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel
Islam & the City, Institut des Cultures d'Islam, Paris, France
Collector, Tri postal , Lille, France
Maghreb: Dos Orillas, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain
Terrible Beauty: Art, Crisis, Change, Dublin Contemporary 2011, Dublin, Ireland
2010
XIIth Cairo Biennial, Cairo, Egypt
Unexpected, Unerwartet, Kunstmuseum Bochum, Bochum, Germany
Res publica, Moscow museum of modern art, Moscow, Russia
Yesterday will be better, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland
In context, Arts on main, The Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Miragens, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Rétrospective et perspectives, Biennial of Dakar, Dakar, Senegal
Biennale Cuvée, Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz, Austria
Breaking News, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, Modena, Italy
CAVE, Contemporary Arab Video Encounter, Maraya art center, Sharjah
THE STATE, Traffic, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Première Biennale méditerrannéene d'Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Silence_Storm, Port Izmir 2, International triennial of contemporary art, Izmir, Turkey
Capturando rayos del sol Norteafricano, Centro Parraga of Murcia, Murcia, Spain
The Storyteller, The New School, New York, USA
The Storyteller, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
The Exquisite Corpse Project, Gasser Grunert Gallery, New York, USA
Shadow Dance, KAdE, Amersfoort, The Netherlands
One shot! Football et Art Contemporain, B.P.S. 22, Charleroi, Belgium
Born in Dystopia, Rosenblum Collection & Friends, Paris, France
As the land expands, the world gets closer, Al Riwaq, Bahrein, Kingdom of Bahrein
Résonances: Artistes marocains du monde, Musée privé de Marrakech, Marrakech, Morocco
Frontières, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Frontières, 8e rencontres photographiques de Bamako, La centrale électrique, Brussels, Belgium
Frontières, 4e rencontres photographiques de Fès, Institut culturel français, Fès, Morocco
Frontières, Centre culturel franco-mozambicain, Maputo, Mozambique
Living Together, Observatori 11, Valencia, Spain
FIAC Tuileries 2010, Paris, France
2009
The Spectacle of the Everyday, Xe Biennale de Lyon, Musée d'art contemporain, Lyon, France
8e rencontres photographiques de Bamako, Bamako, Mali
Balla Drama, Paradise Row, London
America, Beirut Art Center, Beirut, Lebanon
Looking Inside Out, Kunsternes Hus, Oslo, Norway
The Storyteller, Salina Art Center, Salina, USA
Out of Line, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York, USA
Things Fall Apart, Winkleman Gallery, New York, USA
After Architecture: Tipologies de Després, Santa Monica Art Center, Barcelona, Spain
Il faut être absolument moderne, Paradise Row, Istanbul, Turkey
Art Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel
Planète Cerveau, Musée Denys Puech, Rodez, Greece
Collective Memories in three chapters, Galerie Antje Wachs, Berlin, Germany
Cul-de-Sac, Isola di San Pietro, Venice, Italy
Another Border: Who are the others?, Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden
Another Border: Who are the others?, LACMA, Los Angeles, USA
Traversées-Crossings, Darb 17 18, El Cairo, Egypt
Traversées-Crossings, Bab Rouah, Bab Elkebir, Rabat, Morocco
Little Black Curly Hair, Kappatos Galerie, Athens, Greece
TransArabe in Casa Arabe, Casa Arabe, Madrid, Spain
2008
Paradise Now!, essential French avant-Garde Cinema 1890-2008, Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom
Farewell to Colonialism, Third Guangshou Trienniale, Guangzhou, Republic of China
Looking Forward to hearing from you, Musée Gounaropoulos, Athens, Greece
Open Sky, Spaces beyond their Practices, Kunstverein Medienturm, Ilz, Germany
Flow, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, USA
Peur et Désir, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
Traces du sacré, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
The gates of Mediterranean, Palazzo del Piozzo Rivoli, Turin, Italy
Traces du sacré, Haus der Kunst, Münich, Germany
Cadavre exquis, Analix-forever gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
Visionary Tales of a Balanced Earth, The Te Papa Museum, Wellington, New Zealand
Biennale of Pontevedra, Pontevedra, Spain
Traversia, CAAM, Canary Islands, Spain
Videozoom, Sala 1, Centro Internazionale d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy
Traversées, ArtParis, Paris, France
Attempt to exhaust an African place, Santa Monica Art Center, Barcelona, Spain
2007
52nd International Venice Biennial, Italy
Fiac cinéma, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
seven installations, Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Iowa, USA
frontier(s), musée d’art et d’histoire, Saint-Brieuc, France
8ème biennale de Sharjah, art, ecology and the politics of change, Dubaï, United Arab Emirates
Africa Remix, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
1ère triennale de Luanda, Angola
Biennial, international art exhibition, Nadezda Petrovic Memorial, Cacak, Serbia
2006
2ème biennale de Sevilla, the unhomely, phantom scenes in global society, Sevilla, Spain
black panther party for self defense, bank galerie, Paris, France
shard history/decolonising the image, espace arti et w139, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Africa remix, Contemporary art of a continent, moderna museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Absolumental, Les Abattoirs, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Toulouse, France
spiritus, Nuit blanche, église saint séverin, Paris, France
Image révélée, musée de la ville de Tunis, Tunis, Republic of Tunisia
Instituto valenciano de arte moderno, Valencia, Spain
the photographers gallery, explorations in film & vidéo, London, United Kingdom
Courants alternatifs, Le Parvis, Ibos & CAPC musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux, France
Africa remix, contemporary art of a continent, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
7ème Dakar Biennial, Dakar, Senegal
2005
africa remix, l'art contemporain d'un continent, centre georges pompidou, Paris, France
meeting point, the stenersen museum, Oslo, Sweden
tourist class, konstmuseum, Malmö, Sweden
cohabitation forcée, centre d'art contemporain ticino, Bellinzona, Switzerland
image statement position, photocairo, El Cairo, Egypt
rencontres méditerranéennes, horcynus orca foundation, Messina, Italy
uit de landen van ondergaande zon, arti e amicitae, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
marokko kunst & design, wereldmuseum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
africa remix, contemporary art of a continent, hayward gallery, London, United Kingdom
2004
a drop of water, a grain of dust, gwangju biennale, Gwangju, South Korea
inventaire contemporain II, galerie nationale du jeu de paume, Paris, France
africa remix, contemporary art of a continent, museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf, Germany
les afriques Lille 2004 capitale européenne de la culture, tri postal, Lille, France
apagado/encendido, museo nacional de artes visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay
biennale d'art contemporain de Bourges, Bourges, France
foucault cinéma, image mémoire, image pouvoir, cinémathèque française, Paris, France
nearer the near east, a public space project, schirn kunsthalle frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
les camoufleurs, kunsteverein springhornhof, Lüneburg, Germany
2003
observatorio #9, a project for the triennial of Luanda 2005, espace Camouflage, Brussels, Belgium
sur le front, géographie de la peinture contemporaine, le triage, Nanterre, France
in/tangibles cartographies, La Habana Biennial, La Habana, Cuba
espacios mestizos, 2ème international contemporary art meeting, Osorio, Canary Islands, Spain
art vidéo, art interactif, musée de la fondation O.N.A, Casablanca, Morocco
arte en progresion, musée d'art moderne de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
videoarcheology, the red house, center for culture and debate, Sofia, Bulgaria
nuevo video arabe, caixa forum, Barcelona, Spain
journées méditerranéennes d'arts plastiques, Susa, Tunisia
cinéma d'avant-garde, contre-culture générale, cinémathèque française, Paris, France
les résidents, l'ailleurs, l'image et la mobilité, la plateforme, Alger, Algeria
2002
observatorio # 2 trans/action, espace camouflage, Brussels, Belgium
Tv or not Tv, 8ème celebration of expérimental media arts, Los Angeles , USA
images and power, espacio C, Camargo, Spain
pacific cinémathèque, Vancouver, Canada
videorient, landesmuseum, Linz, Austria
latitude villette maghreb, grande halle de la villette, Paris, France
2001
vidéo/je vois, la création vidéo en France, auditorium musée guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
in/tangible cartographies, world wide vidéo festival, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
mutation plastique marocaine, le passage de l’art, Marseille, France
radio de accion, centro atlantico de arte moderno, Canary Islands, Spain
videomarea, palazzo borsa valori, Genova, Italy
9ème biennale art media, Wroclaw, Polland
2000
5ème biennale de Dakar, Dakar, Senegal
uc berkeley & pacific film archive, San Francisco, USA
biennale arte vidéo tv, Bologna, Italy
blue stage, house of world cultures, Berlin, Germany
l’objet désorienté, ateliers d’artistes de la ville de Marseille, Marseille, France
auditorium, MAMAC, Nice, France
society for cinema studies, Chicago, USA
10 familles, 10 artistes +si affinité, Fiac, France
1999
l’objet désorienté, musée des arts décoratifs, Paris, France
7ème biennale art media, Wroclaw, Polland
regards nomades, FRAC Franche-Comté - musée des beaux-arts, Dole, France
Paris-Casa, suites marocaines, Couvent des Cordeliers, Paris, France
un été marocain, Centre d’art contemporain, Castres, France
l’objet désorienté, villa des arts & galerie 121, Casablanca, Morocco
un automne marocain, arteppes espace d’art contemporain, Annecy, France
artistes marocains, ARIAP, atelier/galerie, Lille, France
Special Screenings
2012
Mounir fatmi, Sortir de l'Histoire, mémoire de vaincus, Auditorium du Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille,
France
2011
Tank TV presents... with Artprojx, The SVA Theatre, New York, USA
Xenoglossia, a research project, Center for Historical Reenactments, Johannesburg, South Africa
Huummm... C'est exquis!, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, france
2010
Actual Fears, Centre d'Art Neufchâtel, Neufchâtel, France
2006
11ème Ovarvídeo - festival de vídeo de Ovar, Portugal
2005
Mounir fatmi, salle de cinéma africa remix, curator Marie-Laure Bernadac, centre georges
pompidou, Paris, France
Mounir fatmi, instants vidéo, cinéma le coluche, curator Marc Mercier, Istres, france
mounir fatmiet liselot van der heijden, cabane de projection de Francine Zubeil, Istres, France
2004
Mounir fatmi, maison folie, hospice d'havré, Tourcoing in collaboration with the bureau d'art et de
recherche survival signs, oeuvres video 1990-2004, curator odile biec, videokiosque 01, Pau, France
2003
hommage àmounir fatmi, curator hubert corbin, 25èmefestival du cinéma méditerranéen,
Montpellier , France
Mounir fatmi, curator marc mercier, rencontre vidéo art plastique, CAC Basse-Normandie, France
Mounir fatmi, mahmoud hojeij, curator khalil benkirane, festival international du film expérimental, Gœthe
institut, El Cairo, Egypt
1999
themounir fatmifresh winds from the desert, curator mikey kwella, videofest transmediale,
Berlin, Germany
Selected video festivals
2012
Signals: Power Cut Middle East, International Film Festival, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
VIDEOEX, International Experimental Film and Video Festival, Zürich, Switzerland
Images contre nature, Théâtre des Chartreux, Marseille, France
2011
28th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Kassel, Germany
Tangerine Tales, The invisible dog center, New York, USA
All Memories Significant in Retrospect, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
24e Instants Vidéo numériques et poétiques, La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille, France
Association Petipeti, Rennes, France
Transat Vidéo, Normandie, France
Festival Images contre Nature, Marseille, France
Invideo - International Exhibition of video art and cinema, Milan, Italy
IDFA 24e International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2010
Festival Dromos, Reggio Emilia, Italy
3e Nuit des 1001 vidéos, Analix-Forever, Geneva, Switzerland
Big Up, La Maison, Les Ecuries de Bajora, Anglet, France
2008
L'art de la reprise, Auditorium du Louvre, Paris, France
2006
among the moderns, cinémathèque de Tanger, Tanger, Morocco
6ème festival international d'improvisation libre & de musique expérimentale, Liban
instants vidéo numériques et poétiques, Marseille, France
résistance(s), festival des cinémas différents, France
resistance(s), gallery niu, Barcelona, Spain
cinemathek d’Oslo, Oslo, Norway
coding : decoding : videoprogrammer, Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center, Denmark
alternative film/video festival, Belgrade, Serbia
résistance(s), museet for samtidskunst, Roskilde, Denmark
2005
biennale européenne du court métrage, Ludwigsburg, Germany
2006
loop festival, ccb bar, Barcelona, Spain
international short film festival french/asian, Bangkok, Thailand
signali luminosi, centro art visive, Pesaro, Italy
francophone short film festival, Toronto, Canada
ovni 2005, resistances, centre de cultura contemporanea, Barcelona, Spain
mov international digital film festival, Makati city, the Philippines
les saisons numériques, cinéma mk2 bibliothèque, Paris, France
18e rencontres parallèles, cac Basse-Normandie, Hérouville-Saint-Clair, France
instants vidéo numériques et poétiques, Marseille, France
europäische kurzfilmbiennale, film und medienfestival, Stuttgart, Germany
festival international de cinéma méditerranéen, Montpellier, France
francia 2005 en colombia, Colombia
festival du film français, Yokohama, Japan
2004
generations on the move viper, Basel, Switzerland
festival des cinémas différents, Paris, France
artronica, muestra international des artes electronicas, Bogota, Colombia
18e rencontres parallèles, cac Basse-Normandie, Hérouville-Saint-Clair, France
e-motion les robots, Rennes, France
instants vidéo, musée d'art moderne de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
festival de cinéma méditerranéen, Montpellier, France
mov international digital film festival, Makati city, The Philippines
les saisons numériques, cinéma mk2 bibliothèque, Paris, France
europäische kurzfilmbiennale, film und medienfestival, Stuttgart, Germany
francia 2005 en colombia, Colombia
festival du film français, Yokohama, Japan
2003
european media art festival, Osnabrück, Germany
minnesota's first arab film festival, Minneapolis, USA
journées cinéma de Montauban, Montauban, France
l'image à bras-le-corps, les instants vidéo, Manosque, France
festival des arts électroniques, Bogota, Colombia
2002
mages festival of independent film and video, Toronto, Canada
city scape, the emotion of the city, Cell initiators of incidents, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
argos festival, Brussels, Belgium
2001
festival écrans documentaires, Arcueuil, france
festival vidéo medeja, Novi Sade, Slovakia
2000
festival international de vidéo, Locarno, Switzerland
archéologie du soi, 1er festival de Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria
festival vidéo l’immagine leggera, Palermo, Italy
festival international du cinéma francophone, Moucton, France
1999
festival du film arabe, San Francisco, USA
vidéoformes, Clermont-Ferrand, France
festival international du cinéma francophone, Acadie, Canada
european media art festival, Osnabrück, Germany
festival international linea d’ombra, Salerno, Italy
festival vidéo art, Estavar-Llivia, France
festival vidéo champ libre, Montréal, Canada
instants vidéo, Manosque, France
rencontres vidéo art plastiques, CAC, Basse-Normandie, France
1998
festival international de la vidéo, Canary Islands, Spain
videofest transmediale, Berlin, Germany
festival vidéo art, Estavar-Llivia, France
festival internationale art vidéo, Casablanca, Morocco
vidéoformes, Clermont-Ferrand, France
festival du film arabe de Fameck, Fameck, France
rencontre vidéo art plastique, CAC, Basse-Normandie, France
festival international du film indépendant, Brussels, Belgium
festival international du film nouveau de Split, Split, Croatia
1997
manifestation internationale vidéo et art électronique, Montréal, Canada
la vallée des terres blanches, CICV, Montbéliard, France
rencontres vidéo art plastique, CAC, Basse-Normandie, France
festival international art vidéo, Casablanca, Morocco
1996
festival vidéo de Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
1995
international videokunstpreis, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany
1994
festival arabe de la vidéo, Casablanca, Morocco
1993
festival arabe de la vidéo, Mohammedia, Morocco
Bibliografía/Bibliography
mounir fatmi _ HISTORY IS NOT MINE,
Catalogue within the context of the 10th African
Biennale for Photography
Edited by studio fatmi and in collaboration witg
Rencontres de Barmako
2015
English-French
General Indisposition. An Essay about Fatigue,
Exhibition catalogue curated by Martí Peran at Fabra i
Coats
Edited by Institut de Cultura de l´Ajuntament de Barcelona
Catalan-Spanish-English
201
Los Dictadores (el poder subversivo del arte),
Writed by the curator and cultural manager Adonay
Bermúdez
Edited by Gerhardt Rubio Sw. (vortex)
2014
Spanish
109 pages
ISBN: 978-956-9579-01-1
Ceci n´est pas un BLASPHÈME,
La Trahison des Images
Des caricatures de Mahomet à l´hipercapitalisme
Edited by Mounir Fatmi & Ariel Kirou
2015
French
ISBN: 9978-2-330052-28-6
INSTALLATION ART NOW,
Mounir Fatmi´s Installation Modern Times, a History of
the Machine, exhibited at Mathaf Arab Museum of
Modern Art, Doha, Qatar
Edited and produced by Sandu Publisihing Co.Ltd
2013
240 pages
EnglishISBN: 978-1-58423-514-9
The Kissing Precise,
Mounir Fatmi & Régis Durand.
Belgium, 2014.
ISBN: 978 2 35687 311-8
207 pages
INPUT #5: Blockhouse (Winter 2013),
Under the curation of guest creative director Avelino
Sala, “Blockhouse” as a metaphor for a bunker, explores
the capacity of artists to confront crisis, and to question
of the symbolic function of art and the role of creation
during a critical moment of metaphorical entrenchment.
2013, INPUT Journal
99 p.
ISBN: 2152-7318 (print)
2152-7326 (online)
Mounir Fatmi – Suspect Language
Text by Lillian Davies.
Bilingual French/ english.
graphic design Studio Fatmi, Skira Edition
Skira Editore, Italy, 2012
256 pp.
Sans histoire
Les musée Nationaux du XXsiècle des AlpesMaritimes.
Nice, 2012.
ISBN : 978-2-36380-018-3
24 pp.
Megalopolis
Catalogue exhibition. AKBank Foundation, Istanbul.
Text by Ali Akay.
Trilingual : english, turkish and arabic.
Editor: AKBank Sanat
Istanbul, 2011.
156 pp.
Ghosting
Published on the occasion of the Xth Lyon Bienniale.
Belgium, 2011.
ISBN: 979-10-90680-00-5
288 pp.
Fuck the Arquitect
Published on the occasion of the Brussels Biennial 1
organised by B.PS.22, Le Creux and Frac Alsace.
Brussels, 2008.
ISBN: 2-9526535-2-6
256 pp
.
Hard head
W.F.C. Uriôt prize 2006.
Amsterdam, 2008.
ISBN: 978-90-78681-06-9
128 pp.
Ovalproject. 1999-2002
Centre culturel le chaplin mantes la jolie
Bonières-sur-Seine, 2002.
56 pages.
Mounir Fatmi
Semaine 4605
November, 2005
Textos / Texts
texts (selection)
mounir fatmi
By Lillian Davies
(upcoming publication by Skira, October 2012)
“I feel as though I function like an ambulance, which intervenes when there has been an accident. I am incapable
of doing anything without a sense of urgency.” mounir fatmi, 2007
“The Flea Market at the Edge of the World”
Born in Tangier in 1970, mounir fatmi grew up in the bustling Moroccan port that looks both North, across the
Strait of Gibraltar, to Europe, and West, across the Atlantic, to the Americas. An ancient Berber and Phoenician
settlement, Tangier was founded in the 5th century BC, and over the centuries came under the rule of the
Romens, the Vandals and the Umayyads. In the 15th century, the Portuguese captured the city as part of its North
African conquest, and soon the colony was in the hands of the Spanish, later the British. In the early 20th century,
when much of the rest of present-day Morocco was divided between the French and the Spanish, Tangier
became an international zone, a status it held until World War II, when the Spanish again occupied the city.
Tangier finally achieved full sovereignty in 1956, uniting with the rest of Morocco.
In the early 20th century, the maritime frontier city saw its glory days when foreign artists and writers, from Henri
Matisse to Francis Bacon, Edith Wharton to William Burroughs, would flock to its cafés and hillside villas. The
city’s “interzone period” was especially notorious, as wealthy international pleasure-lovers and adventure-hungry
Beats prowled the exotic city for illicit offerings. Meanwhile, life in Tangier remained sharply divided between
Moroccan and foreigner, rich and poor, man and woman, and, soon for fatmi, father and son.
He was born in the neighborhood of Casabarata, not far from the center of the city. An area of simple residences
and a bustling flea market, Casabarata means “the cheap house.” In interviews, fatmi often underlines this
translation, highlighting the socioeconomic and architectural context that shaped his early view of the world.
Effectively, fatmi's childhood surroundings triggered an early interest in architecture, particularly its
contradictory, and at times antagonistic role in society. For fatmi, architecture either “poses problems,” as in the
situation “I don’t have a roof,” or is “pretentious, thinking it can solve problems.” As an adult, when fatmi
realized a series of projects in the Parisian banlieu of Mantes-la-Jolie, he “discovered that architecture doesn’t
offer anything. Even the idea that architecture can be a solution for humanity is totally false.” This attitude
towards architecture echoes in fatmi's position on artistic production. “Like art,” he says, “no problems can be
solved via architecture. But a house could push you to become an architect…” And so it seems that fatmi's early
surroundings not only pushed him to become an artist, but also provided him with the very images and materials
that he would soon come to manipulate in his work.
Inside the walls of fatmi's childhood home, a triumvirate of objects, tenets of identity and belief, precisely defined
his visual landscape. Hanging high was a black and white photograph of Morocco’s King Mohammed V. “Until I
was older,” fatmi recalls, “I thought he was a member of the family!” Also prominently displayed inside
fatmi's family home was a framed work of Arabic calligraphy that proclaimed a verse from the Sura Al-Ikhlas:
“Say, ‘He is Allah, [who is] One, Allah, the Eternal Refuge. He neither begets nor is born, Nor is there to Him any
equivalent.” The simultaneously decorative and demonstrative forms of the religious text bound its viewers to a
precise system of aesthetics and belief. The family also kept a copy of the Koran in their home, a sacred book that
the children in particular were prohibited to approach. As fatmi remembers it, “we were never clean enough, and
as soon as we touched it, careful…” Domestic life for young fatmi was thus punctuated by “a political image of
someone that we must respect and of a book we can’t touch because we’re not clean enough.” In fatmi's mature
work, “the images come between the two.”
Growing up, fatmi spent a good deal of time at the Casabarata flea market, where his mother sold children’s
clothes to help support the family. For fatmi, the market was like “an end point, a cemetery” of products and
images. And it was there that the young artist “learned how to look.” He also learned how to listen, at times
witnessing an absolute overload of sounds and moving images. “Someone selling radios or TVs,” for example,
“would turn all 50 of them on at once to show that they worked.” In a similar way, fatmi's mature works often
seem to shout, forcing the viewer out of his privileged position of distance and respite and into a vortex of sound,
image and material.
In the early 1980s, the flea market was flooded with cameras from Europe. They functioned “more or less,” fatmi
recalls, “with a white balance that didn’t work or a technical problem that created a desired effect.” It was at
Casabarata that fatmi purchased his first camera, a Russian Yashica that he used to realize his first mature series
of photographs for The Link/Le Lien, 1995.
Casabarata provided a cacophonous, almost suffocating, environment. But instead of expiring under the
incessant weight of his surroundings (both public and domestic), fatmi embraced this context as the very
medium of his practice. “You can either live this situation — the flea market, the neighborhood at the edge of the
world — like a handicap,” or, as fatmi has done in his own work, “you can step away, and through the process of
reading and talking, come to accept this universe and create with it.”
In fact it was at Casabarata market that fatmi made his “first encounter with the Italian Renaissance.” There, as a
child, fatmi saw the Mona Lisa as a cheap reproduction on canvas, “upside-down and being eaten by a sheep.” A
profound mix of violence and humor marks this scene, one that the artist likes to recall in reference to his work
today. Likewise, a preoccupation with the copy pervades fatmi's practice, quite clearly in his ongoing
appropriation of VHS cassettes and XEROX machines, for example. The anecdote of loose livestock devouring a
copy of a Western icon supports fatmi's assertion that “you cannot have one single history of art,” but rather
“the story of the original objects and of their copies.”
The tragicomic scene of the sheep eating the Mona Lisa also speaks to fatmi's interest in fragility, in terms of both
material and concept. “The problem with the original Mona Lisa is that it is not fragile,” fatmi says. “I had to
overcome many obstacles before I could go and see it at the Louvre. I had to study; I had to get a visa to leave
Morocco. I was disappointed to see that it lacked fragility, because that is what I try to find in my work.”
Conversely, the copy introduces a degree of vulnerability, both of the uniqueness of the original and of the
authenticity of the reproduction. Through appropriation, duplication and repetition, fatmi's work today reveals
the precarity of the original, as well as the copy, a flimsy mode of ownership and dissemination.
Meanwhile, growing up in Tangier, fatmi was also cultivating a myriad of references and literary connections
through his discovery of the Beat Generation. A scene that reveled in his hometown in the 1950s, figures like
Paul Bowles (who lived in Tangier until his death in 1999), William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac
left their mark on the city that was the antithesis of post-war America. fatmi says, “The Beat Generation ‘saved’
me in the sense that it gave me the desire to leave and the curiosity to explore and experiment, to take the risk to
be against the majority.” He admires the work of Bowles (whose post-modern writing style fatmi aligns with
Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction), as well as Brion Gysin, Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac — “people
who changed the lives of many, not only in Europe, but also here in Morocco.” At the age of 17, a precocious
fatmi first met Bowles, and twelve years later, the young artist realized his video, Fragments and
Solitude/Fragments et solitude, 1999 that features the elderly American writer and composer.
Already pulling away from his father, as a child, fatmi was drawn to his Uncle Bachir, who was “a bit of a rebel,
free and joyful,” and his line of work as a painter. By the age of four, he says, fatmi had decided he wanted to
pursue the same career. The first work that he sold, realized as a young adolescent, and purchased by the local
tailor for five dirhams, was a painting of a fountain in Casablanca’s Esperanza neighborhood. A gathering point
for prostitutes through the early 1980s, the site marked a convergence of forbidden sex and the continuous flow
of a precious natural resource that no doubt ignited the curiosity of the young artist encountering cultural and
economic frontiers that had yet to be crossed.
At the age of 17, fatmi enrolled in Casablanca’s School of Fine Arts. He lasted three months. His childhood home
was already too small, too limiting, and he was soon bound for Italy, where he took classes at the Ecole Libre of
the School of Fine Arts Academy in Rome. There, in the stately McKim, Mead and White villa, perched high on the
Janiculum, fatmi found himself navigating within the historic foundations of the European continent. “Identity is
the worst heritage you can receive,” he would say later, aching to shake the given identity of his birthplace.
Instead, he prefers to “appropriate other identities.” fatmi's urge to resituate himself also echoes Bowles’s
opinion on the difference between tourist and traveler. For him, “the former accepts his own civilization without
question; not so the traveler, who compares it with others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.”
Having left his conservative homeland for the ancient seat of the Roman Empire, fatmi at times found himself in
surprising new situations. In his academic studies of Art History, and his development of a traditional technical
practice, the young artist often found himself “in front of this sublime, nude woman, who I was obliged to
scrutinize in detail, despite having been educated never to look at women.” For fatmi, these situations were a
“real culture shock.” The question was, “to look or not to look?” fatmi decided to open his eyes.
On a visit to Morocco, during his time as a student in Italy, fatmi's father found the young artist’s sketchbook
from his life drawing class and asked, “Is this what you have been doing in Rome?” For fatmi's father, the work
was “totally degrading.” From his Art History classes, fatmi also showed his father nudes painted by Picasso and
Toulouse-Lautrec. “I see prostitutes,” his father declared. Rather than angrily dismissing his father’s
provincialism, fatmi granted his position validity. “Instead of being frustrated by what I was doing,” fatmi
explains, “he gave me another vision of art and the masterpieces that I had always idealized. So that today, when
I look at a painting in the museum, I can look at it as a work of art — the details of the body — as much as I can
see three prostitutes with their legs spread.” fatmi says that his father’s is a perspective that he “must not lose.”
And so we see in fatmi's work today the continued attempt to straddle the intellectual idealism that supports the
Western canon and the conservative reasoning that underlies some of our most ancient fears.
Upon completing his studies in Rome, fatmi returned to Morocco, where he found a job with an advertising
agency in Casablanca, ultimately working as an artistic director. With the company for six years, fatmi promoted
products like sodas, cosmetics and men’s razors, organizing concerts and fashion shows. Witnessing the
powerful impact that images could have in the commercialized public realm, fatmi suffered a veritable “overdose
of airbrushed images and ready-to-wear concepts.” It was an abrupt shift, from that famed hill in Rome to the
bustling business center of North Africa, but this contrast of culture and context was already forming the
foundation of a lifelong artistic practice that collides East and West, sacred and profane, highbrow and low.
While he held a job in advertising, fatmi continued to make work as an artist, realizing photographs and videos,
some of which he showed in 1994 at the Second Annual Festival of Video Art in Casablanca. On this occasion, the
bold young artist took a VHS cassette with three of his video works to the festival, and running into Marc Mercier
and Jean-Paul Fargier, asked if they would like to see his work. The French curators were impressed and admitted
all three videos, including The Red Alphabet, 1992, which the festival ultimately awarded first prize.
Gradually developing a visibility for his work outside of Morocco, in 1997 fatmi completed a residency in Lille.
There he developed his Peintures effacées (“erased paintings”), a series of works on paper and canvas that
witnessed the erasure of his earlier, abstract and loosely figurative compositions with a layer of white acrylic
paint. Making a spectacle of the rejection of his earlier production, fatmi did not fully hide or destroy the works
that he was no longer satisfied with, but rather presented them as the ruined foundation of a mature practice
that was to come. fatmi “never has, and never will, present a work as untitled.” It may be erased, aesthetically
spare, or nearly monochromatic, but fatmi always provides a prescriptive title, guiding his viewer, revealing his
intentions, and confirming the primacy of language and text.
In 1999, France hosted the cultural year of Morocco, initiating and supporting a series of artistic exchanges in
order to foreground the contemporary creative production of its former colony. Under these auspices, a series of
exhibitions featuring Moroccan artists were organized in France, launching an army of curators and researchers
into the North African country to select work for display. fatmi was among those chosen to participate in a
number of exhibitions in France, and he took up residency that year at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. He
participated in the group show Nomadic Visions, at the FRAC in Dole, as well as the group show Disoriented
Object, at Paris’s Musée des Arts Decoratifs, where he also opened his solo presentation Connections and
Displacements.
During his residency in Paris, fatmi began his discovery of France’s 20th century philosophers, figures that
continue to inform and appear in his work. Writing at this moment of geographical and cultural transition, “out of
exile, I created glasses so I could see,” fatmi was crucially aware of the significance of his move, the importance
of distance in a practice that would examine his contemporary surroundings at such a close range. He understood
that to create, one “must withdraw from the world, from history, and this withdrawal, or subtraction rather, is
not without guilt — like when [the artist] prefers … as a child, to draw, when everyone around him is trying to
figure out how we are going to eat tomorrow.”
“The Other is Him” 1995-1999
By the time France hosted its the cultural year of Morocco in 1999, fatmi had begun to develop a practice based
on elements from his personal history and an encounter with his rapidly broadening world. On the eve of the
millennium, fatmi had established himself as a working artist, begun cultivating an audience outside of his native
country, and realized his very first projects in Europe. However, as much as this moment represents an
expansion, it is important to recognize that fatmi's practice never develops along a straight path, instead it
continually loops back on itself, constantly revisiting childhood references, teenage idols and images of home.
“I’m not interested in making a perfect work,” he explains. “Producing an artistic proposition in response to
what’s happening in the world is very complicated and perhaps very pretentious. But, art touches life, and life is
messy.” And so we see in the years immediately leading up to fatmi's pre-millennial moment the artist’s sweeping
accumulation of found objects, enduring images and nascent memories that form the foundation of his ongoing
practice.
Locating his reference points and defining his chosen, as well as given, identity, a significant portion of fatmi's
work from this time deals with his father, his childhood home, and his formative intellectual influences. For
example, picturing an uncanny resemblance between his biological father and the American Beat Generation
writer Paul Bowles, who fatmi refers to as his “spiritual father,” the artist’s photograph, The Forest/La Forêt, 1999
captures the former in a striking pose. fatmi's father does not look towards his son’s camera; instead he locks his
stony gaze onto a distant elsewhere. To realize this image, fatmi positioned himself downhill from his father,
pointing his camera lens slightly upward to grant his subject a monumental status. Proudly standing on the rocky
terrain, under the leafy canopy of the Forêt Américaine just outside Tangier, fatmi's father figure resonates with
Paul Cezanne’s, symbolically conflated with the Mont Sainte-Victoire.
At the same time, fatmi was working on another sort of tribute, both to his father and Bowles, in the video
Fragments and Solitude/Fragments et solitude, 1999. The video opens with a scene in the Forêt Américaine, where
fatmi presents a young woman working on a crossword puzzle. The artist, in a jester’s cap, questions her
progress, accuses her of cheating, and playfully turns the lens on himself. Sunshine filters down through the
rustling foliage onto the pair, united in a fragile paradise. fatmi lays a soundtrack to the images of this video with
his insistent voice. “I want words,” the artist says in French (subtitled in English). Words “like leftovers from a
meal.” Words “which welcome the foreigner in his country of exile.” Words “like a Sunday… like a family.” Words
“that I can give to my father.” fatmi's voice speaks of loss; his text is searching. “All the fragments in the world
cannot make a single word,” he says. “Not even all the words in the world can speak of solitude.”
The words the artist speaks are his own, “vidéos textes” (“video texts”), as he calls them, written during the
production of the work when he found that his images did not fully express what he wanted. This urge to add
and explain reveals the artist’s anxiety about the status and potential of visual production. fatmi's turn to
language is an ongoing solution in a practice that continues to be dominated by the manipulation of text as a
vehicle of both meaning and aesthetics. Likewise, fatmi's creation of the “vidéos textes” is an admission that
image and language are two very different modes of communication. Just as in the translation of Arabic to
French, and French to English, when sentiments are communicated through images, and images are interpreted
through words, something is inevitably lost. “If only words were free, without any past,” fatmi laments in his
video. But they are not free. And so the artist mobilizes language’s weighty links to status, history and meaning in
order to complicate the presumed directness of the visual.
fatmi's video montage for Fragments and Solitude/Fragments et solitude also features images from a drive
through Morocco and Bowles at an informal conference. The writer’s eyes are vacant and slightly irritable; his
mouth hangs open, and he nods from time to time at the excited audience clustered around him, not ever really
speaking. While fatmi's voice continues to search for words, Bowles expresses exhaustion with language, a
solitude defined by the absence of communication. The video ends with the couple from the forest passing
through a tollbooth; their flight is not free. “Look there, it’s so beautiful. And this green! We are so lucky!”
exclaims the young woman who had been working on the crossword puzzle. What makes them so lucky? Because
they have words to label the landscape? Or because they can puncture the frontiers of language and space? Both
possibilities are key to fatmi's developing work, as we will see him continue to privilege language and perspective
in the confrontation of object, image and context. The September 2011 edition of the monthly French arts
magazine Connaissance des Arts featured La Florence Lumineuse de Fra Angelico (“The Luminous Florence of Fra
Angelico”), coinciding with the opening of Paris’s Jacquemart-André Museum’s major exhibition of the master’s
work and that of his contemporaries. A detail of a truly glowing Mother and Child, Fra Angelico’s Virgin with Child,
1450, graced the front cover of the issue, Mary in a brilliant red gown draped in a gold-trimmed indigo cloak, the
Christ child practically transparent in his porcelain perfection and head of copper curls.
Meanwhile, the back cover of this particular issue featured a color photograph of a pensive Angelina Jolie, her
feet as bare as the Christ child’s and her distant gaze almost as reticent as the Madonna’s. Dressed in loose earthtone linen, the Hollywood actress is pictured seated in a wooden canoe floating in a lush marshland. Her dark hair
hangs loose as she clasps her left knee and snuggles against the bulking Louis Vuitton tote bag slung over her left
shoulder. Like the 15th century icon detailed on the cover, this advertisement is in the business of communicating
and affirming a very precise belief system. In the work of Fra Angelico, pre-Reformation Christianity is at stake,
while in the print image for French leather goods, it is an almost religious exaltation of luxury and celebrity.
The stirring resonances between these two images, endpoints for a 500 year swathe of Western history, would
most likely be invisible, “seen only unconsciously,” if not formounir fatmi'sproject, The Fourth Cover/La Quatrième
Couverture. Started in 1991, more than 20 years later, fatmi continues to build his visual archive, establishing a
unique timeline of parallels and divergences in media and advertising imagery. His is a very simple action of
pulling a particular magazine off the newsstand and opening it to present its front and back covers (the first and
the fourth) side by side, a diptych of secular icons. fatmi's skills of observation, his sense of the nuances of
aesthetics and composition, as well as the social and political implications of particular juxtapositions, yields this
series a revelation.
Meanwhile, returning to the site where he first learned about the terms of financial exchange, fatmi's black and
white photograph Casabarata, 1999 pictures an aging electronics vendor kneeling for prayer. The transformation
of a site of commerce into a place of worship — the surprising juxtaposition of context and content, as witnessed
in fatmi's The Fourth Cover — is the source of the work’s conceptual tension.
Further examining the fraught and permeable boundary between the sacred and profane, fatmi traces the
transfer of consumer goods and images from the marketplace to the home in his photographic series The Link/Le
Lien, 1995. These black and white images, shot with the Yashica fatmi bought at Casabarata market, follow a
white coaxial antenna cable as it enters his family’s house to feed fatmi's father’s bulking tube television. The
artist’s lens tracks every point along the cable’s path, a suspicious gaze trailing the entry of a foreign body into a
domestic space.
Similarly, for Fragile, 1997, a black and white video shot in Tangier, fatmi traced a white coaxial cable laid across
the ground with his camera lens and the steps of bare feet. Barking dogs, crowing roosters, and other ambient
sounds creep in through growing static to form the video’s soundtrack. fatmi lays French and English text over
his images: “If two things unite either the two survive and remain therefore two distinct entities or they
disappear to become a third different thing or else only one of the two remains while the other ceases to be.
Thus in the three cases union is made impossible.” With this quote, from the 12th century Muslim theologian
Fakhr-ad din ar-Razi’s “A Commentary of Divine Names,” fatmi uses ideologically charged words to question the
possibility of reconciliation between foreign images and the domestic landscape. In fatmi's montage, the coaxial
cable eventually dissolves, an outcome announced by French words scrawled in white chalk: “Communication
fragile” (“fragile communication”). In the subsequent montage, fatmi replaces the cable with a line of white
powder, then a white rope. The rope snakes through the grass to a box television, and fatmi returns to the chalk
line, finally truncated and punctuated by two rough stones. He renders the possibility of communication
impossible. fatmi's photographic series The Link/Le Lien and his video Fragile mark some of the very first times
that the artist appropriated white coaxial cables for the creation of his work. The artist continues to incorporate
these white cables into his practice to indicate the transfer of images and information. Immediately recognizing
the symbolic, as well as the sculptural and pictorial potential of the cables, fatmi realized works such as Parallel
Worlds/Mondes Parallèles, 1999, for which he wrapped pieces of colored tape around 12 meters of cable that he
used to trace a gentle curve across the floor. Likewise, for Sculpture Sequence/Séquence sculpture, 1999-2004,
fatmi created an installation with bundles of cut cables, colored tape and aluminum pipes, evoking both an
energetic nucleus and an unraveling mass.
For 500 meters of Silence/500 mètres de silence, 2004-2005, meanwhile, fatmi conceived a more ambitious
installation incorporating hundreds of meters of cut coaxial cables, a sawhorse, white textiles, a wall painting of a
dog subjected to Pavlov’s famous experiment of anticipation, and a soundtrack. Contextualizing the omnipresent
material as part of a larger script, the artist conjures decorative arabesques while also alluding to a dramatic
rupture in the flow of information. The tangle of cables carries an aesthetic as well as a political weight. What has
been censored? What are we allowed to see? What have we been conditioned to expect?
The artist’s wall-based sculpture, Al-Jazeera “bas-relief” sculpture sequence/Séquence sculpture “bas-relief” AlJazeera, 2004-2007, reproduces the Qatari satellite television network’s logo with white coaxial cables. Carefully
stapled onto a white wooden panel, the flame-like calligraphy is one of a series of low-relief sculptures (realized
with white coaxial cables) representing highly loaded scenes: the Pietà, Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, and
Saddam Hussein with a bushy beard and bleary eyes, as he looked when he was captured by American soldiers in
an underground hideout near his hometown of Tikrit. Each image in the series carries a heavy historical, religious
or political weight. Al-Jazeera is especially strong, as the image invokes the flood of narrative and debate enabled
by the broadcaster’s challenging and influential programming.
fatmi also uses the white coaxial cables to literally mark potential connections between objects, in an illustration
of conceptual catalysts. He also employs the cables to align his own work with historical figures such as Jackson
Pollock (whose tangled all-over paintings fatmi likens to Arabic calligraphy). For his installation Connections
Tribute to Jackson Pollock/Les liaisons, homage à Jackson Pollock, 1999 fatmi echoes the swirling splashes that the
Abstract Expressionist laid with industrial paint on canvas in a loose series of overlapping loops and curves made
of more than 500 meters of white cable. Attaching the cords to a wall painted in the bright red of the Moroccan
flag, fatmi maintains a connection to the lo-fi material’s origins in Casabarata market.
When fatmi began his series of monochromatic paintings, Peintures effacées (“effaced paintings”), in the mid1990s, he saw the work as a challenge to Morocco’s “decorative tradition,” a rebuke to his observation that there
is “no audience in Morocco for conceptual work.” Realized in black and white acrylic on paper and canvas, these
works witness fatmi's erasure of his own previous works. The first piece he produced in this manner is No
Witness/Sans témoin 1995-1996. The title refers to fatmi's audience, or rather, lack thereof. A performative aspect
is crucial to the realization of these works. The artist demands a spectator for the effacement of his previous
work, and the introduction of a nearly uniform surface. Effectuating a similar process, fatmi's Obliteration
Memorizing/Effacement mémorisation, 1996, pairs the artist’s “erased” monochrome paintings with black and
white photographs of the individual who saw the work before it was covered with multiple layers of white paint.
the paintings “peint, vu, effacé” (“painted, seen, obliterated”), fatmi recalls the history of the surface and links
his actions to his unique witness.
fatmi adopted a similar methodology for the realization of Father’s Carpet/Le Tapis du père, 1998-2009, works
that, for the artist, represent a “realignment of the object.” Appropriating his father’s prayer rugs, in one case,
fatmi painted wide stripes of white, yellow, blue, green, purple and red across the textile’s traditional black, rose
and white weave. On another rectangular rug, he painted swirls and circles over the intricate woven pattern. In
both cases, fatmi sees his action as a “desacralization” of the object. More specifically, he has recently spoken of
“changing from a religious sacred to an artistic sacred,” and of taking objects “out of the mosque to put them
into a museum.” In these works, he undermines the initial status of the object, treating it instead as a blank
canvas. fatmi's act of “realignment” subjugates not only the object, but also his father’s identity and the act of
worship.
Again turning towards witnesses, fatmi questions identity and visibility in his video The Others are the Others/Les
Autres c’est les autres, 1999, realized in Paris and its banlieue, Mantes-la-Jolie. His camera bobbing with the
rhythm of each footstep, his lens swaying from left to right, fatmi approaches the people he meets on bustling
sidewalks with the simple opener: “Can I ask you a question?” The work follows the format of Edgar Morin and
Jean Rouch’s film Chronique d’été, realized on the streets of Paris in 1960. A series of short interviews, Morin and
Rouch began each encounter with the question: “Are you happy?”
The first person we see fatmi address in his video is a white-haired white man who doesn’t even acknowledge
that the artist has spoken. Then a couple rushes by. “We don’t have time,” they say, without slowing. In the next
images, fatmi shows us people who stop, look at the camera and the artist, and attempt a response to fatmi's
next question, one that he has selected from novelist Mohamid Dib’s Tree of Questions: “The world is full of
strangers, who are the others?” Responses come in French, English and Arabic (which the artist has subtitled in
French and English). “It’s whoever is not us,” a young woman reasons. “It’s us!” counters a young Asian man.
“No comment,” murmurs another. A man explains in Arabic that there is not really much difference between the
Arab and the foreigner; the question is more whether the person is “cultivated or not cultivated.”
An African man provides one of the most compelling answers presented in fatmi's video, explaining: “There are
no foreigners because if you talk about foreigners, we are all foreigners somewhere… But once you adapt to the
place or the situation, you are not a foreigner anymore.” He continues, clarifying, “If you meet someone else that
you don’t know, like me, for example, I am a stranger to you. But from the moment we have a little chat, or we
discuss things just a little, or we share a conversation, then I am no longer a stranger.” There is such truth in his
simple reasoning, truth that so many in fatmi's taped encounters are afraid to approach, rushing past in feigned
urgency, maintaining foreignness through a refusal to engage with a question. fatmi closes his video with an
exchange with a middle-aged Frenchman, who turns the game of strangeness onto the medium of video. “The
other is him,” he says, as he pushes the lens of fatmi's camera so that it faces the artist directly. Placing the status
of the artist at stake, the “other” is revealed as the observer, the interrogator behind the camera. Encountering
the omnipotent other, for his wall-based sculpture, Face - 99 Names of God/Face - 99 noms de Dieu, 1999, fatmi
marked 99 white name badges with one of Islam’s 99 names of God. “Islamic art has not produced any images of
God,” explains fatmi. “The religion restricts the representation of God. In the Koran, God is evoked by 99 names,
such as the Superb, the Creator, the Teacher or the All and Most Compelling.” For fatmi, in this work, even if the
elegant black Arabic lettering remains undecipherable for his European or American audiences, the script
maintains a “sacred value,” its letters “dancing on a wall of silence.” Presenting a dichotomy of
language and image, fatmi says that he likes “the limitations inherent in representations of God, the fact that God
has 99 names and no set image. I am always trying to get closer to this image,” he explains, “one that doesn’t
exist in anyone’s imagination.”
In his video Survival Signs, 1998, fatmi looks closely at the role of language, positioning speech as a means of
survival. The work opens with black and white images of Arabic calligraphy and the Latin alphabet flashing across
the artist’s silhouette. “Speak! Parle!” the artist whispers in English and French, a rhythmic, echoing repetition
that soon melts into a lullaby. “Speak so that I can see you,” fatmi demands, as he shows us a hand clutching an
ultrasound image of a human fetus. Across the screen, fatmi presents a scenario in plain text: “In the 13th
century, Frédéric de Hohenstaufen devised an experiment where he separated newborns, and some were not
spoken to in any language at all. Result: they all died without ever saying a word.” Images accumulate on screen,
the deadly the antitheses of language: scenes of war, emergency vehicles, and newspaper clippings that highlight
the phrases “4500 children die,” “diplomat,” “supplies,” and “embargo.” “Seven years after the laying down of
arms, on the morning of 28 February 1991, the Gulf War continues,” fatmi's video silently declares. No one has
spoken, and we are made witness to those who have died. The artist ends his video with a pair of eyeglasses
being washed in the sink, and a hand drawing one small dot, helpless actions of vision and creation, deprived of
speech.
The silent response to fatmi's Survival Signs is his installation Body Bags/Sacs mortuaires, 1999, two soft black
canvas coffins that the artist presents plainly across the floor. Seemingly full, and zipped up tight, a plethora of
figures fill these sacks. While fatmi's work seems eerily prescient in advance of NATO’s invasion of Afghanistan
and the United States’ occupation of Iraq, the work also speaks, in the artist’s conception, of the death of God.
“God is one person,” fatmi says, “and he is dead.” Does he mean that the all-encompassing deity is no longer
present in today’s society? Or that contemporary language and culture have killed the possibility of his presence?
Like much of fatmi's work, the aesthetic language of this sculpture is bold and direct, but its conceptual
resolution is left open and unresolved.
The lightness and humor that fatmi introduces in works like Fragments and Solitude/Fragments et solitude and The
others are the others/Les autres, c’est les Autres is heavily countered by a darker sentiment, present in works like
Body Bags/Sacs mortuaires. Our amusement with the sheep fatmi saw as child eating the Mona Lisa in Casabarata
market is countered with the real violence that this action represents. Grappling with his own history and
evolving position between two cultures, fatmi proposes a debate regarding the status of the object and the
sanctity of the image, each defined by its relationship to language. His work maintains a level of tension in the
refusal to resolve the struggle between signs of survival and those of a violent end.
“Everything is Fragile” 2000-2005
At the time of the attacks of September 11th 2001, fatmi's work was poised to address the implications that the
destruction of the World Trade Towers would have on the United States and Europe, as well as on his native
region of North Africa and the Middle East. fatmi had already begun to focus his practice on the border between
his childhood home and his expanding sites of reception, a frontier zone that is both a barrier and a unique point
of connection. And from this period onwards, he increasingly situated his aesthetic practice at the political,
religious and cultural crossroads of East and West. Architecture became one of fatmi's principal points of
interrogation at this stage, as he realized videos, sculptures and installations that adopted the language of this
profoundly political medium.
fatmi made his eerily prescient video Horizontal Fall, 2000 from footage he shot in Val Fourré, a troubled
development in the Parisian banlieue of Mantes-la-Jolie. The video features the demolition of two 18-story
residential towers at precisely 2:30pm on Sunday October 1st, 2000. The public housing complex, built in 1973, was
victim to a local redevelopment project. For the occasion, the local town hall commissioned a program of sound,
music and dance, “Tours Sonnantes” (“Singing Towers”), played on loud speakers temporarily installed
throughout the community. This “urban opera,” written by the composer Kamil Tchalaev, was accompanied by
choreography arranged by Sabine Jamet, featuring the participation of children from Val Fourré. The audio
program included a Muslim call to prayer (which fatmi captures in his video), as well as the angelus of a local
Catholic congregation. fatmi's video opens with the sound of sirens, followed by the announcement on Radio
Droite de Cité of the scheduled destruction of towers seven and nine. Following the song of the muezzin, the
twin towers, wrapped in white bandage-like banners, fall in tandem. “A page in the history of Val Fourré has been
turned,” a voice on the radio ventures, “twenty-seven years of history have tumbled.” A cloud of dust blows
across the landscape, and fatmi's lens follows dozens of families as they move within metal barriers to return to
what has become an empty space.
Just a few years later, after the fall of two much taller towers in New York City, fatmi realized Save Manhattan 01,
2003-2004, a shadow of the American metropolis’s former skyline made with books (including the Koran)
published after 9/11. “With the destruction of the Twin Towers,” fatmi says, “we rediscovered that everything is
fragile.” Drawn to the event for its revelation of vulnerability, the artist explored its context and implications
through three different medias. The first was built with books that fatmi believes, “would never have existed
without that event.” In the second two manifestations of this sculptural “triptych,” fatmi realized the city’s pre9/11 skyline with two other “tools of contemporary media manipulation:” black VHS cassettes and audio speakers.
fatmi adopted the VHS cassettes for Save Manhattan 02, 2005 as a means to address the overload of images that
followed the event (as well as, presumably, to reference one of the key platforms for the diffusion of radical
Islamic teachings). Presented on the occasion of the 52nd Venice Biennale, fatmi constructed Save Manhattan 03,
2007 with audio speakers that play ambient sounds the artist recorded in New York. A closure to the series, this
work, in its appropriation of sound, “from the morning, the afternoon, the evening, in the street and the
subway,” brings the city, in all its enduring vulnerability, back to life again.
fatmi's sculpture (and photographic series) Brainteaser for Moderate Muslim/Casse-tête pour musulman modéré,
2004 (2009) engages Islam’s most iconic piece of architecture, the Kaaba at Mecca. For this work, fatmi arranged
four black Rubik’s cubes, each ringed with an identifying band of white, at various stages of manipulation. Also
engaging a toy version of the Kaaba, fatmi's video Manipulations, 2004 presents a pair of hands, blackened with
viscous oil, maneuvering one of the artist’s two-tone Rubik’s cubes. The relentless handling of the blackened
cube becomes a symbol of the faithful Muslim’s ritual circumambulations of the Abrahamic site. Meanwhile, the
video’s soundtrack pulses with a sound like a beating metal heart, accelerating as the solution approaches. As the
image blurs, fatmi flashes archival footage of pilgrims making one of seven ritual revolutions around the cuboid
building at Mecca. The Rubik’s cube disappears in the last moments of the video as the coated hands continue to
rub together, stained.
The structure of the Kaaba also appears in fatmi's Propaganda/Propagande, 2004, a “cube made of VHS tapes
[that] represents Mecca.” fatmi put the work on legs “to de-sanctify the object, to make it a sculpture on a plinth
instead.” Realized the year before Save Manhattan 02 (which is also made entirely of black VHS cassettes), these
works mark the introduction of the VHS cassette as a veritable medium in fatmi's mature practice, signaling a
means of copy and distribution: methods of propaganda.
VHS cassettes containing recorded teachings from radical imams started arriving in Casablanca in the 1980s from
Saudi Arabia. “My reflections around VHS tapes began at the beginning of the 90s, because the tapes served as a
way to disseminate propaganda in Morocco that came from Saudi Arabian preaching. A second stage was Bin
Laden’s famous tape… You had to accept this tape, believe it at its word.” As a teenager, fatmi worked in a
Casablanca wedding video studio and after hours he and his colleagues would make copies of the Saudi Arabian
tapes, popular merchandise on the streets of the city.
For his video Commerciale, 2004, fatmi staged a situation that would be unimaginable in today’s France (or
anywhere in Europe or the United States, for that matter) by placing a small-scale replica of the Kaaba inside the
turnstile doors of a provincial shopping mall. For one afternoon, the black cube, marked with a distinctive white
band in its upper tier, spun at the center of the revolving entryway that guided the arrival and departure of
oblivious shoppers. In the video, fatmi includes the clank of café dishes mixed with the murmur of passing crowds
armed with carts, caddies and shopping bags. Manipulating the video with Final Cut Pro’s effect for a
transparency layer, the figures that circumambulate fatmi's temporary sculpture seem to “disappear” against the
banal commercial center background.
Recreating the pilgrim’s revolutions around Mecca’s sacred structure, fatmi conflates the French shopping mall
and the Kaaba as sites for commercial exchange. Initially, he explains, “each tribe would sell representations of
their god [at Mecca].” In fact, before Muhammad conquered Mecca in 630 CE, the Kaaba contained 360 different
pagan idols, all of which were subsequently removed in accordance with the Prophet’s monotheistic vision.
“When it was decreed that God is everywhere and there is only one, this effectively ended the commercial role of
Mecca,” explains fatmi. In this video, fatmi simultaneously evokes an historical role of the religious site as well as
the recent re-commercialization of the area surrounding the Grand Mosque through developments such as the
Abraj Al-Bait Towers, also known as the Royal Mecca Clock Tower complex, a massive commercial center opened
in 2012 by the Binladin Group.
Strategically repositioning another example of Islamic architecture — this time a marabout in rural Tunisia —
fatmi's video, The Lost Ones/Les égarés 2003-2004 witnesses several young people atop the holy site’s domed
rooftop. Critics Odile Biec and Evelyne Toussaint (in their text “Comprendra bien qui comprendra le dernier”) have
written that in this video, fatmi's “camera becomes an arabesque which draws both body and architecture,
inventing a topology.” Likewise, the young figures in this video, dressed in modern Western clothes, trace their
surrounding landscape with an intense and determined gaze, as if to stake claim to the site. The artist wisely
leaves the soundtrack of this video largely unelaborated, giving his viewers the ambient sounds of wind and bells.
fatmi was aware that his shoot for The Lost Ones/Les égarés would be cut short with the arrival of the police.
Ahead of filming, he prepared a handful of cassettes that he knew would be confiscated, and within an hour after
he started recording, his cast was forced to disperse. At the end of the video, fatmi features a montage of men
and boys in white robes and skullcaps, rocking and praying before pages of calligraphic text. The artist thus
provides a backdrop for his subversive performance with images of the rituals of conservative religion.
A similarly pointed challenge to authority, this time political, manifests in fatmi's In the Face of Silence/Face au
Silence, 2002, an installation that addresses the disappearance of Mehdi Ben Barka. The work hinges on an
archival photo of Morocco’s King Hassan II driving the leader of his country’s leftist, anti-royalist party (and the
young King’s former tutor) in a regal town car. Admitting that “one cannot create a political work but rather, one
can use a political context within which the work can evolve,” here, fatmi presents a collection of artifacts,
including the historical photo and a figurine of a matador waving a red cape embellished with the green star of
the Moroccan flag. Not long after the photograph of the King and Ben Barka was taken, the opposition leader,
then exiled from his native country, was kidnapped outside of Paris’s Brasserie Lipp. He was never seen again.
Conspiracy theories indict King Hassan II, Morocco’s General Oufkir, as well as the CIA and the Israeli Mossad.
Without pointing fingers, with this work, fatmi merely lifts the veil on the mysterious end for a figure who, after
severing ties with the Moroccan royal family, became close with revolutionaries such as Che Guevara and
Malcolm X.
Again appropriating a political context for the evolution of a sculptural work, fatmi's G8 The Brooms/G8 Les Balais,
2004 focuses on the role of international coalitions. Unfurling the flags of the member nations of the Group of
Eight, the artist attaches each to a heavy-duty broom. The work is prescient, as the collection of brooms, propped
against the wall, foreshadows former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s wish, following the riots of November
2005, to “sweep up the scum” from the banlieue of Paris.
Appropriating horse jumping poles to suggest social and political barriers (while also alluding to the Arab
equestrian tradition), fatmi realized installations such as Traps/Pièges, 2004-2005 and Next Flag, 2004-2007 with
the wooden beams suspended and snapped into a variety of arrangements. Marked with patterned bands of
color (like his sculptures of coaxial antenna cable wrapped in colored tape), fatmi employs the horse jumping
poles as one might a drawn line or a stroke of paint, creating lively compositions of form and color.
Continuing his equestrian metaphor, fatmi's video trilogy, Man Without a Horse/L’homme sans cheval, 2004-2005
examines “three types of fall: physical, metaphysical and historical-political.” In these works, fatmi addresses
man’s struggle with status, power, history and the course of the future through a frenetic montage of horse
jumping competitions, equestrian sculptures, a merry-go-round, and a lonely horseman. The series closes with
Movement 03/Mouvement 03, a video in which we see an older man in a traditional English riding costume (but
without a horse) kicking a hardback book, titled HISTOIRE, down a muddy country road. Ominous electronic
music, featuring anxious strings and a deliberate horn section provides a pulsing soundtrack for the actor’s
neurotic action. Eventually the book’s binding comes apart, but the aging jockey continues kicking the pages
through the mud and puddles. Finally, fatmi's protagonist falls to the ground and the artist declares in text on
screen: “The man is the only hero of his own story.”
An equally calamitous scene characterizes fatmi's work Picnic under embargo/Pique-nique sous embargo, 2003, a
performance and outdoor installation consisting of oriental carpets, a table, dinnerware, and an electronic audio
system amplifying the sounds of the artist arranging dishes and bending cutlery with pliers. Presenting the work
at the 2nd International Contemporary Art Meeting on the Canary Islands, fatmi cut the center of the wooden
table and the carpets in order to install the manmade elements flush around the trunks of a cluster of trees. A site
for a communal gathering, the title of the work nonetheless announced a situation of isolation, a punishing
political act. fatmi's performance ends with “the destruction of all that is on the table.”
Hauntingly similar, fatmi's video Feast Tribute to William Burroughs/Festin, hommage à William Burroughs, 2003
conflates consumption and destruction in a nightmarish reference to William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (a novel of
“routines” partly set in the seedy backstreets of Tangier). The buzzing frenzy of winged insects provides the
audio for fatmi's work as the artist follows a brilliant green cricket creeping amongst hundreds of brightly colored
candies scattered in a shallow concrete pit. The allusion to the delirious imprisonment of drugs and addiction is
clear. The cricket is soon trapped, dragging its abdomen and unable to jump. fatmi borrows the words of
Burroughs in a text he pastes over his montage: “Heroin, opium, morphine, palfium: all these things to free you
from the monkey, the monstrous monkey of need that gnaws at the back of your neck and eats away at
everything that’s human in you.” The same year, fatmi made his video The Scissors/Les Ciseaux, 2003 “in
collaboration with the Islamists who directed the codes of censorship.” A compilation of scenes cut from Nabil
Ayouch’s Une Minute de Soleil en Moins, fatmi's video features heavy breathing and a poorly lit bedroom sequence
alternating with images of a group of peasants walking across a rocky landscape. We also see a boy riding a
donkey, children playing on swings, and a child smashing a clay piñata with a stick. Towards the end of the video,
fatmi also allows Ayouch’s original script to be heard. “The whole world is a sewer,” a woman’s voice says in
French, “and the only thing that makes it all worth it is making love and loving.” In this work, fatmi reveals a
series of hidden exchanges, flesh and narrative deemed too dangerous to enter the cinemas, homes and minds of
Moroccans. The artist defies the censures levied by religious leaders, revealing images once considered
contraband.
Taking as his starting point a “mutation of the word ‘Taliban,’ which in Arab means ‘student,’” fatmi sparked the
possibilities of his own library with a series of physical interventions for his works Connections/Connexions, 20032007. As a means to demonstrate the simultaneously dangerous and necessary links between ideas and
information, for these sculptures, fatmi connects a diverse range of publications with colorful electrical wires and
alligator clips. “For the Taliban, to study is to study one sole book, The Koran,” explains fatmi. “I don’t think that
we can understand the world by studying just one book. We need to make links with other things, sometimes
contradictory things… Danger does not seem to lie in reading the Koran alone, but in connecting it with other
books.” While referencing the extremist group, fatmi mischievously asserts, in a related series of photographs of
young people strapped with duct tape to a provocative amalgam of books and newspapers, that the connections
that the artist is making could be used as a sort of intellectual IED (improvised explosive device/EED engine
explosive improvisé).
Echoing artist Mark Lombardi’s pencil diagrams that meticulously chart crime and conspiracy networks, fatmi's
sculptural works for his series Connections/Connexions link publications such as The Oxford Cambridge New English
Bible with Josef Van Ess’s Flowering of Muslim Theology and Dharmachari Subhuti’s The Buddhist Vision. Colliding
the belief systems of all three religions of the book with those of Hinduism and Buddhism, fatmi proposes a
network of influence and exchange. Likewise, his Connection 02: The Language/Connexion 02: Le Langage, 20032009 joins Jerome Duhamel’s comic volume 100% Francais (100% French) with Harrap’s Le Japonais utile en voyage
(Japanese Phrasebook) and Larousse’s Dictionnaire modern Francais-Italyn (Modern French Italian Dictionary),
creating a visual cacophony of voices. In the works My Literature/Ma Littérature, 2003 (a photographic triptych)
and Evolution or Death/L’Evolution ou la Mort, 2004 (a photographic series presented at the First Haifa Biennial),
as well as his more recent French Theory, 2010 (a sculpture of books and connection cables), fatmi continues his
use of electrical wiring as a means to spark reaction to the proposed juxtaposition of words in black and white.
Blinding Light 2006-2009
Choreographing his public encounter with the dominant narratives of history, religion and architecture, fatmi's
mature practice engages the objects, figures and belief systems that he has encountered over the course of his
life. Navigating divergent geographic, political and cultural trajectories, fatmi maintains a direct visual language,
engaging his selection of accessible, lo-fi (and increasingly outdated) materials: black VHS tapes, white coaxial
cables, electrical wiring and horse jumping poles. Video and text (in the form of Arabic calligraphy, the Hebrew
alphabet and the Latin lettering of English, French and German) increasingly define his aesthetic production as he
draws images, texts and artifacts out of history and into a blinding light.
In his photographic diptych I Like America/J’aime l’Amérique, 2006, fatmi returns to the jockey who appears in his
video series The Man Without a Horse/L’homme sans cheval, featuring him among horse-jumping poles painted to
resemble the American flag. fatmi's installation I Like America, tribute to Jacques Derrida/J’aime l’Amérique,
homage à Jacques Derrida, 2007, also features the wooden obstacles painted with the stars and stripes. In both
works, several of the poles are cracked or broken in a sculptural echo of the French philosopher’s divided
reception in the United States. While Derrida ultimately gained a strong following there (Columbia University and
The New School awarded him honorary degrees), many American scholars apparently saw him as “the
personification of a French school of thinking they felt was undermining many of the traditional standards of
classical education, one they often associated with divisive political causes.” Conflating sport, philosophy and
politics as equally fraught realms where nations jockey for power, in these works, fatmi presents the playing field
without necessarily declaring a winner.
After the Fall/Après la Chute, 2007, a single broken red horse jumping pole, and Double Strategy/Double stratégie,
2007, a pile of crutches, also highlight the fragility of fatmi's chosen materials and the vulnerability of the work of
art. “Above all … the obstacle is an artwork,” fatmi says, “fragile, unstable, and always threatened by possible
collapse.” Through their titles and direct visual language, this group of sculptures makes a strong reference to
the United States, with a prescient suggestion of instability on the eve of the international financial crisis that
began in 2008, a global event largely triggered by the collapse of Manhattan-based Lehman Brothers and the
meltdown of the American housing market.
Also investigating cracks in the narrative of recent American history, fatmi's most compelling and rigorous work
of this period deals with the legacy of the revolutionary organization The Black Panther Party. Incorporating an
extensively censored release of archival material, as well as new interviews that the artist realized with David
Hilliard, former Chief of Staff of the BPP, fatmi has produced videos, installations and photographs that attempt
to re-contextualize the actions of this closely monitored, controversial group. With a rigor that fatmi has not yet
employed to address the governments of his native region, in these works the artist directly indicts acts of
surveillance and censorship realized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The FBI’s archives of surveillance on the BPP, made public from 2006 to 2009 through the Freedom of
Information Act, form the starting point for Out of History/Sortir de l’Histoire, 2005-2006, fatmi's installation of
archival documents and a video, History of history/Histoire de l’histoire, 2006. The video features a montage of the
artist’s conversation with Hilliard and surveillance files on the BPP’s activities from its founding in 1966 through
its dissolve in the early 1980s. fatmi invited Hilliard to visit Paris in March 2006 to show a selection of material
collected on the BPP for the exhibition “Black Panther Party for Self-Defense” (the original name of the group) at
Galerie La B.A.N.K (the first gallery fatmi worked with in Paris). At this time, Hilliard spoke with fatmi about the
history of his organization and its surveillance by J. Edgar Hoover’s secretive government institution.
fatmi's video Suprematism for Self-Defense/Suprématisme pour l’auto-défense, 2006-2009 also deals with the BPP
and the FBI’s surveillance of the group. A large portion of the 2000 files the Bureau released on the BPP was
blacked out before their release, judged too sensitive for public consumption. Mobilizing this mottled collection
of documents, in this video, fatmi digitally erased all of the text that was deemed permissible, leaving only the
black stripes and squares wielded to censor information. The result recalls Malevich’s Suprematist works,
ideologically charged canvases that celebrated abstraction, technology and “objectless” philosophy. The thick
black stripes that efface the collected information slowly accumulate on a white background, along with
numbered codes, a stamped seal and a signature. There is no sound, just the steady assembly of black marks. The
process continues until fatmi's screen goes entirely black. Can it be a coincidence that Ad Reinhardt was making
his black monochromes at the height of Edgar Hoover’s career at the head of the FBI?
Associating a political movement — the Black Panthers Party — with an artistic movement — Suprematism — in
much the same way as he does in his series of posters for work The Dynamic Geography of History, 2006-ongoing,
fatmi proposes an inextricable link between the political and the aesthetic. In the poster series, fatmi proposes
equivalencies between movements like Capitalism and Minimalism, Fascism and Futurism, and Socialism and
Constructivism, a humorous series of pairings that nonetheless ring true.
fatmi's more recent video, Memorandum, 2009 also engages footage from fatmi's conversations with Hilliard,
specifically recordings of his exchange with an audience, including middle-class gallery-goers and young people
from the Parisian banlieue, gathered at the gallery on the occasion of his 2006 exhibition at La B.A.N.K. Fielding
questions from the crowd, Hilliard explains the motives of the BPP and those of the FBI. Through the Freedom of
Information Act, Hilliard had filed for three million documents, but only 200,000 were ultimately released. The
video features images of the released pages, further reduced by state censorship, laid over the recorded images.
The patterns of lines and text obscure Hilliard’s face as he attempts to fill in the gaps of his story. “Why did they
erase the names?” a young man, dressed in hip-hop style clothes, asks in the video. “So we won’t know who their
snitches are,” Hilliard explained, “so we won’t know who they’re talking to…” He fired off statistics: “twentyseven killed, forty still in prison, nine in exile… Everyone went to prison, I went to prison, and you were lucky to
go to prison, because otherwise they’d kill you.” The group was given NGO status in Algiers, linking the BPP to
fatmi's native region. “We were a global movement,” Hilliard explains, “that’s why they were so afraid of us.” In
his conversations with the young men from the banlieue, Hilliard links the BPP to the youth who had joined the
riots in France that spring. “We all want jobs, health care and education,” Hilliard says, “that’s what unifies.”
A number of other works from this time reflect fatmi's extended engagement with the archive, and his interest in
recontextualizing historical artifacts. fatmi's installation The Monuments/Les Monuments, 2008-2009, a heap of
construction helmets labeled with the names of key Western philosophers is a sly counter-party to his circle of
100 hookahs posturing for Assassins, 2010. A sculptural index of the thinkers that have influenced his practice and
the cultural stereotypes that perpetually fuel fatmi's lines of inquiry, these two works distill the identifying
nomenclature in the ongoing clash of East and West.
A medium that has at times been celebrated for its utopian possibilities, but has often proved fragile and divisive,
fatmi addresses architecture through a range of archival documents and materials. fatmi's photograph Fuck the
Architect, 2010, for example, a black and white image of a souvenir vendor presenting his spread of mini Eiffel
Towers on the dust of the Champ de Mars, not only recalls fatmi's early references to Casabarata market and his
interest in the copy, but also examines the documentary possibilities for monumental architecture. “It’s the relic
that becomes more interesting than the original,” fatmi says. Democratizing, the copy allows other classes to
“consume a copy of the culture.”
Following his series Save Manhattan, sculptural works that address a moment when monumental architecture
(not to mention a nation) suddenly became vulnerable, fatmi continued to investigate the instability of the
medium in a number of sculptures, as well as videos. fatmi presented Underneath, 2007 at the Sharjah Biennale, a
type of “tabula rasa,” the artist explains, that represents the generic skyline of a modern city projecting above
and below a white table. Likewise, Skyline, 2007, fatmi's sculpture made of black VHS cassettes mounted on the
wall, their magnetic tape trailing down towards the floor, mirrors the verticality of a modern cityscape while
draining its rigid frame of the possibility of lasting content.
Part of his series of videos Architecture Now!, fatmi's Etat des Lieux #3, I lived on the 3rd floor in Tower n°2, 2010
features still views of tower blocks, quiet neighborhood streets, and the steady destruction of a high rise housing
unit in the jaws of an anthropomorphic piece of CAT equipment. The sound of the machinery crunching through
concrete and debris falling to the ground forms the video’s audio landscape. At times, figures are seen at a
distance, but we cannot decipher their faces, expressions, or ethnicity. The video draws to a close with a track
from the French rap group Uzi, friends of fatmi's based in Mantes-la-Jolie. “La limite, le ciel” (“The Limit, the
sky”), the rhyme is called. But can it be, as bricks and steel come tumbling down?
Also part of his Architecture Now! Series, fatmi's video Etat des Lieux #4, City of urgency/Etat des Lieux #4, la cité
d’urgence, 2010 features footage of the same destructive piece of machinery chewing into the roof of a five story
residential building on a clear, sunny day. We hear the sounds of the heavy equipment, falling debris and water
spraying from the jaws of the CAT to keep down the dust. Still, steady camera shots and brilliant, precise color
define this video as each room of the structure, like cells, are revealed bearing the traces of unique domestic
spaces. Creating the effect of a patchwork quilt as a series of once separate rooms are exposed next to one
another, fatmi's lens scans across planes of bright orange, amber yellow, mint green, wild patterns of wallpaper
and a floral motif framing an abandoned doorway. As the skin of the structure is torn off, fatmi introduces the
first movement of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 23, a product of utopian Bauhaus playing as the walls of modernity
come down.
Once again engaging black VHS cassettes to construct his own fragile architectures, fatmi's Keeping Faith/Gardons
Espoir, 2007 is, for the artist “both an electric chair that represents death and an image of a throne that
represents the society of the spectacle that Guy Debord critiqued.” fatmi has written about this work in the same
context as Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair, 1967, a work, the Moroccan artist says, that deems us “all guilty and
that we are all condemned to see.” Warhol’s is a “modern chair for a modern death,” fatmi writes, and he echoes
this death in his own work, “erasing the chair in an installation made of VHS cassettes, destined for a death with
recorded images.” fatmi quotes Warhol’s words: “It will be hard to believe how many people will hang a picture
showing an electric chair in their living rooms, especially when the color of the picture matches the curtains.” For
fatmi, this is “where the genius of Warhol and all of his talent resides — his ability to camouflage such a horrific
image so that it can enter the living room.” And so, with Keeping Faith/Gardons Espoir, fatmi is also attempting to
adopt the strategy of camouflage, foreshadowing the liquidation of the object and its image. This threat of
erasure also defines other works that fatmi has produced with VHS tapes, such as his tomb-like installation, Leave
and wait for me/Va et attends moi, 2007, the wall-based sculpture Black screens: The line/Ecran Noir: La ligne, 20072008 and A Tomb for the Color Black/Un Tombeau pour la couleur noir, 2011.
Signaling an apocalyptic end, these works closely connect to another part of fatmi's production that directly
explores the death of God. For his video God is Dead, 2007, fatmi alternates the printed statements “God is dead
by Nietzsche” and “Nietzsche is dead by God” in flourished black lettering on a white background. The video is
without sound, granting the English words a silent gravity. Meanwhile, fatmi's installation God is Great/Dieu est
grand, 2009 features sheets of white paper printed with the text, “God is Great.” Tiny, almost invisible to the
naked eye, the line of black text can be viewed through a microscope that fatmi provides. Like the words that
fade to white in his video God is Dead, faced with a scientific instrument, words of faith appear as elements to be
dissected and explained away. Complimentary images, fatmi's black and white wall paintings Hard Head/Tête
Dure, 2005-2008 and Dead or Alive, 2008 feature large-scale skulls embellished with Arabic calligraphy or a long
beard shorn in accordance with religious regulations. Once crowned with prayer bruises, one might imagine,
fatmi presents these heads as lifeless relics of tradition and belief.
“What is death?” fatmi asks, in reference to these works. “The end of cycle,” he declares. “And where is this end?
Casabarata market.” And so he sends us, once again, hurdling back to the dusty streets of Tangier, the origins of
his visual and conceptual language.
Building his exhaustive archive, splicing and interrogating words and images to the point of disintegration, fatmi
at last draws light into his aesthetic language. Ghosting, 2009, an installation of XEROX machines and VHS
cassettes, is chaotic, fatmi says, “like Casabarata market.” Likewise, Mehr Licht!, 2009-2011, a mesmerizing
installation that translates the spectacle of Times Square into spinning disks of Arabic calligraphy, and In the
absence of evidence to the contrary/Jusqu’a preuve du contraire, 2012 feature hulking copy machines, neon and
text, overwhelming the viewer with material and blinding light. This is not a light of revelation; fatmi's neons and
flashing rays threaten to negate the original through the production of infinite copies and to irradiate objects,
images and text to the point of dissolution.
State of Urgency 2009-2012
Throughout the development of fatmi's practice his interest in language and games has become clear. Text
pervades his video and sculptural works and pieces such as Brainteaser for Moderate Muslim/Casse-tête pour
musulman modéré reveal his interest in play. What is new in his most recent work is his focus on the machine, that
emotionless animal that first caught his attention in his Architecture Now! videos. fatmi quotes from Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s Fiches, § 327, “Comparons: inventer un jeu, inventer un langage, inventer une machine” (“Let’s
compare: invent a game, invent a language, invent a machine”), a statement the artist sees as suggesting a
conflation between play, speech and the modern machine. fatmi asserts that language and play can function with
the same brutal drive as mechanized objects, and, conversely, that machinery can embody the poetry and
lightness of our social and linguistic constructs.
Several recent works reveal fatmi's urge to grant text a sharp and imposing platform. Dramatic examples of his
increasingly aggressive aesthetic can be found in a number of sculptural works that pair steel rotary blades with
the seductive arabesques of Arabic calligraphy. The Machinery, 2008, 30 steel saw blades embellished with black
script and positioned in an ominous swarm across the wall; Cuts, 2009, calligraphy-embellished steel rotary blades
that stab through white pedestals; and Contamination, 2009-ongoing, a photographic series that witnesses
calligraphy covered saw blades slicing into various publications, such as the Le Grand Dictionnaire de L’Art (“The
Dictionary of Art”) unite texts from the Koran and the Hadith of the Prophet with menacing industrial tools.
Similarly, fatmi's sculpture Between the Lines/Entre les lignes, 2010 presents steel disks cut through with
calligraphy, allowing a play of positive and negative space, light and shadow.
fatmi's installation, Modern Times, A History of the Machine/Les Temps Modernes, Une Histoire de la Machine, 2010
incorporates an army of stencil-cut rotary blades, churning electronic sound and a black and white video
projection that layers spinning disks of calligraphy over architectural plans of Middle Eastern monuments. The
work takes Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film Modern Times as a starting point, a cinematic reference that climaxes with
the silent actor trapped in the oversized cogs of an enormous, anonymous factory. For fatmi, Chaplin’s film and
his own recent video speak to the “the alienation of man in modern industrial society” .
fatmi's videos Mixology/Mixologie and Technologia (both 2010) also feature Arabic texts on rapidly rotating disks.
Mixology pictures the transfer of black and white arabesques onto a DJ’s turntable, while Technologia adds
geometric patterns to rapidly flashing circles of black and white calligraphic text, creating the illusion of depth
and form.
Simultaneously hypnotizing and disorienting, these videos that unite text with the circle can be understood to
visualize acts of devotional repetition, from the daily Muslim prayer cycle and the circumambulations of the
Kaaba to the Catholic rosary.
As fatmi's circles of calligraphy spin on the wall and the dance floor decks, they also recall Marcel Duchamp’s
Rotoreliefs, 1935, black and white cardboard disks that are spun to produce an illusion of depth or a familiar threedimensional object. Printed as an edition, Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs also echo the assembly line production of
Chaplin’s factory and anticipate fatmi's interest in the copy.
fatmi's video, Beautiful Language, 2010, also asserts the razor-sharp violence of language. “My tongue is a
hemorrhage,” fatmi declares in this work, a line from his Manifesto Coma (started in Tangier in 1998), “I bleed
each time I speak.” The video, which won the Grand Prix of the Cairo Biennale in 2010, is a flickering montage of
images from Francois Truffaut’s film, L’Enfant Sauvage (“The Wild Child”), 1970, based on a true story from the
late 18th century of an “uncivilized” child put under the care of a French doctor studying difference. The flashing
series of images in fatmi's video is difficult to watch; we see the “wild” boy’s face cleaned, his hair cut, the doctor
and his maid putting the child’s shoes and clothes on, measuring and examining him, and teaching him to walk.
The boy learns how to hold a cup of tea, and to put together an alphabet puzzle. In front of a chalkboard, the boy
draws wild circles as the doctor attempts to teach him how to render a straight line. fatmi splices this sequence
with repeated images of the boy writhing on the floor, violently reacting to his formation. But we can’t hear the
child’s cries; they are masked by fatmi's unsettling electronic soundtrack.
Another group of fatmi's work that engages Arabic, Hebrew and German lettering in the sculptural form also
presents text as a sharp and heavy force. For The Falls/Les Chutes, 2010, steel calligraphic letters tumble from a
cardboard box and in Suspect Language, 2010-ongoing, fatmi constructs sculptures with steel lettering attached
with heavy-duty clamps. For The Awakening Day/Le Jour du Réveil, 2011, the artist places steel Arabic script in a
wooden box, linking each character with starter cables. And for The Impossible Union/L’Union Impossible, 2011, he
has fitted a German typewriter with Hebrew keys and jutting, over-size Arabic calligraphy, declaring the rigid
incompatibility of each language.
Sculptural sampling and remixing, where neither religion nor the canon of Western painting is sacred, defines a
number of fatmi's recent works, particularly those in his series Mechanization/Mécanisation. Foregrounding the
motif of the circle, in these works, fatmi appropriates Muslim prayer rugs as a platform for collage. Likewise, for
his work Maximum Sensation, 2010, he fits sections of the woven textiles onto skateboards. The piece is a playful
collision between East and West, old and young, where each appropriated artifact is infused with the
contradiction of the artist’s chosen juxtaposition. Similarly, fatmi's Sonia Sonia Sonia, 2011 consists of prayer rug
collages that recall the palette and forms of the French modernist’s canvases and textiles. Circular forms are
consistently present in Delaunay’s work, as in fatmi's, an aesthetic echo that unites the two artists across cultures
and time. fatmi's Our Music/Notre Musique, 2010, meanwhile, is a collage of speakers and a reproduction of a
classical painting, a clash of objects that fatmi encountered as a child at Casabarata market, among the
electronics vendors and the sheep eating a copy of the Mona Lisa.
For his video, The Angel’s Black Leg/Jambe Noir de l’Ange, 2011, based on Fra Angelico’s painting La Guérison du
diacre Justinien, 1438-1440, fatmi focuses on the unusual medical act that Saints Côme and Damian are pictured
attending to: the grafting of a black man’s leg to the white body of Deacon Justinien. A haunting, high-pitched
sound provides the ghostly audio for fatmi's work, a montage of x-ray, magnified and negative images of the 15th
century painting. “Others don’t see the black leg right away,” fatmi observes, “or write about it, or consider it.”
In his work, the black leg is primary, “the beginning of mixed society,” in a Renaissance rejection of the
bifurcation of race and culture.
Meanwhile, fatmi has also been working on an intimate investigation of a contemporary icon, the writer Salman
Rushdie. After the artist tried without success to come into contact with Rushdie, whom he hoped to film
sleeping, fatmi decided to turn to 3D digital technology. Started in 2005, Sleep-Al Naim, a black and white
imagination of the author peacefully resting, his bare chest rising and falling with each breath, was shown for the
first time in 2012 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Paris’s Institut du Monde Arabe for the exhibition “25
ans de créativité arabe” (“25 years of Arabic creativity”). For fatmi, Rushdie is “a true voice of critical thinking.” In
The Satanic Verses, Rushdie “opened a door that showed that the Arab World lacked self-critique and a sense of
humor. He is the subject of the film because on the one hand he is an important figure, but also to show that he is
able to sleep, that he can be in peace and not under threat as he [has been] for so long.” Rushdie’s novel, a form
that is suspicious to conservative Islam, and his audacity of satire have made him both an exile and a hero of free
thought.
For his project The Journey of Claude Lévi-Strauss/Le Voyage de Claude Lévi-Strauss, started in 2010, fatmi takes as
his starting point the anthropologist’s account of his own voyage of exile. “I hate traveling and explorers,” LéviStrauss writes, opening his book, Tristes Tropiques. “After the armistice, thanks to the friendly interest shown by
Robert H. Lowie and A. Métraux in my anthropological writings, and to the diligence of relatives living in the
United States, I was invited to join the New School of Social Research in New York as part of the Rockefeller
Foundation’s plan for rescuing scholars endangered by the German occupation,” he writes, explaining the
arrangements behind his departure from France in 1941. “But I did not begin to understand the situation until the
day we went on board between two rows of gardes mobiles with sten guns in their hands, who cordoned off the
quayside, preventing all contact between the passengers and their relatives or friends who had come to say
goodbye, and interrupting leave-takings with jostling and insults. Far from being a solitary adventure, it was more
like the deportation of convicts.” fatmi seizes on Lévi-Strauss tale as representative of those of innumerable
immigrants around the world and across history. “More than the travel,” fatmi explains, “it is rather the
impossibility of travel, through the borders, visas, and weight of identities that the traveler is forced to face in
exile which is the subject of this installation.”
Reuniting Lévi-Strauss with his philosophical colleagues, fatmi's The Structuralists/Les Structuralistes, started in
2010, features a black and white drawing of five Structuralists (Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser,
Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes) seated on the forest floor in tribal skirts and ankle bracelets. “The work is
about language and its structure,” explains fatmi, “especially of the end, or ‘what is left’ of a philosophical
movement inspired by a linguistic model.” The illustration is based on a caricature by Maurice Henry that
appeared in the Quinzaine littéraire in 1967 showing the major philosophers in a forest, almost naked, surrounded
only by their thoughts. Like his work on the Black Panthers, fatmi explains, this work addresses a philosophical
movement that “influenced many people for a time and that is still enduring today.”
Directly referencing the arrival and close of the Arab Spring, fatmi's work The Lost Springs, April 2011, pairs two
three-meter brooms with the 22 flags of the Arab League. Presented at the 54th Venice Biennial, the work is a
formal echo of his 2004 sculpture G8 The Brooms/G8 Les Balais. This time, however, Europe and the US are out of
the equation; the political block is made laughable in works like Green Monochrome, 2011, a photo of former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair shaking Qaddafi’s hand at their historic first meeting in 2004, following Libya’s
renouncement of its weapons of mass destruction program.
Two years after the first protests alighted in North Africa, the sparks of the Arab Spring seem to be fading. In
June 2012, Islamists attacked art galleries in the affluent capital of Tunisia, citing images offensive to their religion.
And Egypt’s newly elected President, Mohammed Morsi of the Freedom and Justice Party (a branch of the
Muslim Brotherhood), voted in after months of protests centered on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, has clearly declared
his faith in Sharia. “Sharia! There can be nothing but Sharia, Sharia, Sharia!” he exclaimed in the spring of 2012.
“There is no other good for this nation. I swear before God and I swear to you all, regardless of what is written in
the constitution, Sharia will be applied!” Tentatively, but clearly, fatmi has mocked this position in the past in
works such as The Thieves/Les voleurs, 2006, five severed latex hands laid in a row across the Saudi Arabian flag.
As his practice develops, fatmi will undoubtedly continue to return to the documents and narratives of his youth,
as well as the clash of cultures he has witnessed in his movements across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. His
formal interest in the circle, linked with his conceptual interest in the copy and repetition are clear in his most
recent works Casablanca Circles and Oriental Accident (both 2012), ambitious installations that engage the round
form as a symbol of the cyclical nature of history and society’s inescapable return to the past. In a clear rejection
of Western modernism’s forward marching line of progress, fatmi will not ignore his own history, and will, we
hope, continue to be brave enough to address the inconsistencies of his present. “If you had to define your work
in one word, what would it be?” Jérôme Sans asked fatmi in 2007, on the occasion of his participation in the 52nd
Venice Biennale. “It would be urgency,” fatmi replied. “I feel as though I function like an ambulance, which
intervenes when there has been an accident. I am incapable of doing anything without a sense of urgency.” And
urgent times these are.
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Burroughs, William. Naked Lunch. London: Fourth Estate, 2010.
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Megalopolises
By Ali Akay
2011
In 1990s a new period started in which nation-states were in decline and a new trans-national political and
economical structure began to emerge. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the USSR, while the European
Union progressed towards a single currency, cities that sliced the world horizontally evolved into new world
centers. The tension between the centre and the periphery started to reconstruct the world beginning from the
horizontal line. The transformation of cities was most apparent in the processes of gentrification and
normalization. New investments in old, marginalized neighborhoods steered towards a new urban planning
approach. And architects, the core determining agents of this process, recreated the buildings of the cities.
Towards the end of the 2000s, with the acceleration provided by the non-institutional movements of the 1990s
and together with the progress towards the project of becoming contemporary, certain significant moves in
contemporary art were taking shape. As cities bearing new energies, the centre-cities started becoming more and
more attractive for the ‘normalization/gentrification’ processes. The codes of culture and art were transformed in
unison with the dynamism of the city to produce a new dynamic. In the period that I have defined as the “period
of Megalopolises” , in the beginning of the 1990s, a new endeavor started to emerge in which the trans-national
capital was slowly constructing the hierarchies of the centre and periphery relations through cities rather than
states.
It could be stated that together with globalization, postmodernism, the questioning of the hierarchy between
high art and low art, the popularization of the Third World art, the increasing numbers and variety of the grand
biennials of the world in a period of megalopolises has led to the increasing visibility of artists ‘born in or with
family and cultural roots in the Third World’ due to the shift of the centre and periphery relations from countries
to cities and the increasing significance of global-cities. In the period also defined as the “post migration
condition”, it was apparent that artists of the “Third World” were no longer making traditional art to reflect the
local culture of their country, but rather pursuing a double-sided critical strategy in which instead of opposing the
West, they were utilizing matching technologies and ways of thinking to produce alternative strategies. Artists
living in the West, working and producing work in two languages and in two countries started to become more
interesting. The western market has only now started to recognize the value of such artists artistically and
economically. It is now possible to observe an increasing number of artists present in the current art scene with
two languages and two cultures; either the third generation, born in western cities, or those studying and staying
long enough in western centers to become a part of the two cultures; who could therefore have a critical
perception of both sides. This sensibility is a new formation different from the earlier anti-western, Third World
nationalism and traditionalism. These artists have started producing work outside the boundaries of traditional
left wing discourse and nationalist bearings. This deconstructive method with a double-sided critical approach is
spilling outside the clear-cut boundaries of home and abroad, while seeking a pragmatic route to narrow down
the borders through expansion. The post-colonial discourse that has been the determining paradigm of western
art in the last 20 years had especially been instrumental in facilitating the emergence of the artists of the horizon
in western European art exhibitions and art market both.
On the other hand, in conjunction with the fields of philosophy and sociology engaging theoreticians and
occupying a significant role in the trans-disciplinary position of contemporary art, and with the increasing
importance of cultural studies in the 1990s, alongside studies pointing at the general tendency of the system to
develop in a culture weighed direction, the art sphere is now as much influential as the political and economical
domains. It could even be argued that it is much more prominent. As the studies of Loic Wacquant and Luc
Boltanski, starting off from and referring to
Weber, on “The New Spirit of Capitalism” illustrate; the late capitalist system flourishes and develops virtually by
mimicking the art field. Due to the expansion of capitalism in all directions, as revealed in Negri and
Hardt’s Empire , capitalism has to renew itself, within its integrated geography, for it no longer has a place or land
to expand to at times of crises.
Urbi, which is the regeneration movements in economy-politics and cultural formations that would be
functioning in the centre of urban economy, had not even considered the virtual actions that would lead to its
emergence. On the other hand when we term the process becoming-world we would be able to face a concept
that would at least slightly part from the global. When we see that being from the world or being a world citizen
actually means to be able to look beyond the borders of national boundaries and national culture, we would then
be able to realize that the process of becoming-world functions differently from globalization which deals mainly
with the capital movements of the world. What is the difference between the meanings of becoming-world and
globalization? This would connect us with the concepts of resistance and culture that separate worldwide from
the global. The artistic and cultural efforts and ways of thinking should be considered separately from the
prestige aiming tendency of the capital, even if these actions are sponsored by global companies, because the
most important difference lies in the reason behind the actions. Why do we not associate art with calculation?
Why do the investment groups consider financial gain and not art when they fund the culture and the art fields?
Why are the “Public Relations Companies” and “Advertising Agencies” concerned about the prestigious and
symbolic values and not art itself when they are acting as the mediators and financial organizers between art and
the capital? To ask these questions from within the field implies a certain understanding of the differences in the
environment. The question “Who thinks about what and when?” would be instrumental in understanding the
difference between becoming-world and globalization. So much so that what is being deliberated on and what is
being actually done will become significant in the process of the practice. When artists and curators work without
considering what sort of practice would suit the capital best, they are actually not serving the global capital,
however producing an exhibition or an artwork by considering the rules of the capital and that alone would limit
the artistic and intellectual processes involved in making an exhibition which would in turn reduce the effect of
the work. Hence, a worldwide culture or art practice differs from the global movements of capital and its frame
of mind. In his work dealing with the concept of Becoming-World Jean-Luc Nancy points at the similarity between
art and the worldwide: According to him “a world is never an objective or an exterior unit of order. A world is
never in front of me, or the world in front of me is not my world. But a totally different world”. As this excerpt
would illustrate, my world is the world that I live in; the world in front of me is nothing but another world. “When
I am in art the world of art resides in me and the world of art becomes my world”; but the world of art and
culture perceived by the capital is not the world of art; it is the world of the capital in front of the world of art.
This is globalization. In fact according to Nancy, “I might not even be able to know that this world is a world”.
Although here Nancy is mentioning the arts that he is familiar with, I prefer to reside on the difference of the
capital and the art world. So, whether the world that I am a part of is the art world or the financial world
illustrates the difference between becoming-world and globalization. If we were to steer alongside Nancy, we
would be feeling a “resonance” in the world we are in. “A world is a space where a certain tonality resonates”.
And doesn’t this resonance determine the uniqueness of that world which belongs to us. What is unique is the
world that we are in and that we feel the effects of. And thus, it is not global but “worldwide”. 8 Considering
their difference, another phenomenon must be emphasized: Which leads us towards another question derived
from the one put forth earlier. Even if the aesthetical has entered our capitalistic everyday lives and had distanced
the artist from the 19th century notion of the “beautiful”, art still has a basic concern about humanity, we are
faced with a situation just like the one confronted by the scientist. And if the artist or the scientist is concerned
about their income or their trivial egos while making art or science, they would be venturing away from the
essence of art and science. At the end of the day, a world functions on the order of a work of art. On that note,
becoming-world is not globalization.
A figurative distinction could be made as such: The term becoming-world refers to the youth protesting against
the G 8’s in Geneva defined as “No Global” by Antonio Negri, in a single word a “multitude”/multitudo. Reacting
against the economical gain inclined global system of law to be able to sustain worldwide justice. Standing
against an “Americanized” and “Disneyland-like” system of legal culture, inclusive of copyrights issues like the
AMI, they feel more inclined towards the “Copyleft” system. That is, instead of protecting the rights and doing
this by pouring money, allowing the rights to be freely transferred onto other users to enable scientific inventions
especially in computer software. This also feeds a thread of friendliness that could be called hospitality. This is a
system of worldwide hospitality and offering following the footsteps of Levinas and Derrida. Therefore it also
supports and proposes organizing against issues of nationalism and racism. All these lines of action against the
capital, the law, the culture, the privatized and personalized media, and the petty top-ten society of the global
world, have a critical view on the globalised world, emerging out of the concept of becoming-world.
A world becomes a world when it is lived in; however it is a known fact that the postmodern capital is
unterritorialized. It has lost its country and land; yet we could not proceed further without asking the question,
“will art have a land or a country?”. It would not be wrong to have a look at the perception of the arts at the
period of nation-states at this point. And a glimpse of the developments in the 19th century would complement
this investigation. Let us take Hegel as an example. In his lectures on Aesthetics Hegel places the arts in a certain
hierarchy. This hierarchy of the three stages of symbolic, classical and Romantic was leading towards a reading of
the history of art through the history of philosophy. Here, Hegel is actually mentioning three different
geographies: The first one is relating to Egyptian art, the second to Greek and Roman arts and the third to
Northern European Christian art. It is due to this reason that 19th and 20th centuries several scholars and artists
in various different locations have considered the arts in relation to national cultural characteristics. This would
also apply to the materials used in art as well as the artists themselves. Only ten years ago, in certain spheres,
there were people claiming that from painting one should understand paint on canvas and that this practice
indicates the Mediterranean culture; however another argument contrary to this one stemming from installations
or what we call contemporary art today was stating that “Northern Art” would be a better term for describing
the mentioned activities. We should be thankful that such an incredible distinction no longer exists.
This world is the world of its inhabitant; the inhabitant thinks within this world: If the world is the world of art it
would be possible to think within art, if it is the world of money and capital it would be possible to think within
the wheels of money and capital. A world is a place; it is an intersection place of existing places. To settle means
to dwell. The world being dwelt in is like the name given to a place where something is being thought about. And
as such it would be possible to be either global or worldly. According to Nancy, “dwelling”, to dwell somewhere,
is connected to the words ethos and etos of Greek origin. And according to these two similar words, it means to
“stand under” all kinds of ethics. In a similar fashion, the Latin words habitare and habitus, derived from the
root habere, embody the meanings such as to stand, to hold. It means to fill a certain place, to hold a place, to
have a place, to have the right to use a place. Therefore the world is an ethos or a habitus.
mounir fatmiresides within a critical consideration of this process outlined and explained here, and through his
interest in the architecture of cities he looks at a world dominated by new technologies from a world that is
vanishing, with an ironic gaze from the Arab world; on the one hand he works through his own cultural codes,
towards the culture and art field of the West by utilizing various materials, especially network materials
(connections, lines-cables (the lines both as in Arabic calligraphy and in cable lines), figures, hadiths, readymades), and on the other hand puts together a critique of the chaotic investment world of architecture and city
planning of our day with an aesthetical language, using new available materials, objects of technological cultural
consumption. In the installation assembling various sizes of speakers looking like a playfully arranged modern or
postmodern cityscape from a distance, their shadow cast on the wall presents the vision of a real city
(Manhattan) waiting to be saved. On the other hand, there is the city and its humming in excessive decibels, the
noise of the city (shouting, horns, alarms, together with the sounds of the night life creating the noise and
cacophony of music) offering a basic clue about the life in megalopolises. As a result of this perception Save
Manhattan will surely be read as an allusion to September 11th. Here we encounter the condition of the 21st
century, the outside-of-the-West gazing at and empathizing with the West. We witness the same attitude
inmounir fatmi'swork with figures and hadiths; a North African, coming from Moroccan culture and critical of
both the West and the East. The sharpness of the senses of beauty and goodness transport us into a Nietzschean
mentality beyond “good and evil”. So much so that it is impossible not to feel the sorrow and the exhilaration in
the critical view of this approach. In his work titled The Machinery the artist reminds us that we are living in a
machinery world. In the video work, The Ghost, empty, transcendental, vertical spiraling, curved and
discontinuous lines - arranged according to an immanent plan - creating invigorated and congested figures where
the plan is generated. Thinking through figures: figure forming from the ghostlike through Islamic
calligraphy. Ecran Noir is another work made by available materials (ready-made), this time VHS tapes assembled
one next to the other; a thought provoking work, disguising the image yet showing the supporting transporter of
the image. The work is also reminiscent of the bands of the cassettes in Sarkis’ work, however instead of the
tapes carrying films or music,mounir fatmiinstalls the black box disguising the tapes themselves, as if urging the
viewer to contemplation: the black box reveals nothing itself while holding the truth inside.
The installation on the architectural configuration of the city, titled Les Monuments, consists of an agglomeration
of hard hats with the name of a different poststructuralist philosopher inscribed on each one: G. Deleuze, J.
Derrida, J. Baudrillard etc. If we were to follow the footsteps of Marie Duparsi’s interpretation ofmounir fatmi,
written in 2009, we would be able to conclude that the ready-made hard hats are actually a construction of
another kind. Just as ideas are part of a city being constructed passing through and beyond modern or
postmodern thought; while ideas themselves are metaphorically an architectural construction; the helmets not
only refer to the configuration of the city planning approach of the new postmodern megalopolises, they also
evoke the inherent risks therein. It touches on the destructive side of the postmodern global cities, their
disposition of tearing down all links with the past, as described in Ulrike Beck’s Risk Society. While the helmets
protect against the risks they also remind one of their existence. In la Pieta Michelangelo depicts the innocent,
lamb like Jesus, who had sacrificed himself, in the arms of Mary, but the medium ofmounir fatmiis the media of
our times; of a world operating by cables, networks and communication: Jesus is in agony and pain, and the
media is carrying disinformation to the inhabitants of the new urbs; the fact that every piece of information is
transformed into a sensationalized news, only to be followed by the next sensation remains to be one of the
most significant problems of our times.mounir fatmimoves towards a similarity in form, of course he utilizes a
well known, popular form, however only when we think of the overwhelming energy carried through the cables
do we realize that this is not imitation but seizing power. Instead of inventing new forms he grasps the power
within the available form, and uses it, displays it. As Klee said, “…not (to) reproduce the visible; rather … (to)
make visible” is worthwhile: to construct the “logic of sensation” which makes the powers operating in the world
of information and disinformation of the journalist and of cities visible. The state of megalopolises today is
evaluated by the biotic conditions through the socio-ecologic humanistic and urban perspectives defined as the
Chicago school. The biotic elements and struggles in the politics of living spaces and settlement areas are being
drawn towards another perspective with the normalized and gentrified anti-ecologic and bio-political expansions,
and while nostalgic elements are preserved in certain neighborhoods, modernist structures are being torn down
in others to make way for new structures that would fit the neo-liberal economic rent policies of the day. The
settlement analyses of the population migrating from Europe to America, the ‘new population groups’ according
to Park from the Chicago school, are being replaced by a new trend developed through magazines of architecture
and design and nourishing from artistic perspectives. The truth that lies behind the evaluation of an art work as
an art document as much as a work of art is due to the amalgamation of art and life in the bio-political period.
According to Boris Groys, the merging of ‘applied arts’ with city planning, design, architecture, advertisement and
fashion, has led to the relocation of life in art. Here migration and ethnic groups, despite their existence, are
being considered as disconcerting factors in the city to be pushed and evicted as far out of the centre as possible.
The ecological viewpoint considered as the “new environmental approach” by Park is being replaced by the
‘ecology of new materials’; megalopolises are being utilized as laboratories for architectural experiments, and the
relationship of settlement and planning as a field is being “aestheticized” employing more baroque elements
than functionalistic approaches. In the mean time, ‘humanist ecology’ is being replaced by a trans-human
ecology. That is; life networks, contexts, animals and plants are being envisaged in new spaces and earth is being
elevated towards the air. The fact that the rooftops of buildings are being utilized as areas for plants, animals and
even as areas of transportation could be considered in correlation to the transformation of the ground level into
an underground world in certain megalopolises. This would seem most fitting especially in Latin American
megalopolises. It has been determined by city planners long ago that the centre and the periphery have been
merging. On the other hand, the ‘trans-ecology’ of the economic city that separates productive areas and counter
productive areas, aims to segregate the homeless, unemployed, sick (especially with AIDS) and disabled from the
world of the productive and hardworking in American megalopolises. The new welfare distribution economy
emerging out of the normative city perception wishes to spatially separate the work and residence areas while
fusing them technologically.
We are progressing towards an era of ‘dis-urbanization’ (urbanization without cities) as perceived by Murray
Bookchin, a period in which urban belts take over cities. The political new urbanization model is expanding by the
principle of demolish-and-build in various parts of the world especially outside the west. China has been a
curiosity for artists as the most thrilling example of such madness. Economical rent policies that have become
state policies organized by the permissions granted by municipalities play an important part in the reshaping of
the megalopolises. In the crisis of a world of citizenship and democracy, ‘tax payers’ are exposed to economic
policies founded on their taxes rather than having a say over them. The ‘citizens’ who have been rendered
inactive, have become part of a world of indifference, looking only for ways of sustaining their lives while being
contained in a policy of pacification. When the greed of the city manifests itself as a market, the demolish-andbuild policies establish the main axis of the megalopolises, and preservation of the past materializes only at the
surface, the simulation of the facades of buildings. The fact that the geography of the city is now a topography
reshaped by governing powers, undermines the theoretical and practical implications of intellectual and urban
approaches. Use value is being transformed into exchange value, in a period of real submission in the face of the
trans-national fluidity of capital. The megalopolis character of a city, which is more and more organized like a
company than a city, is evaluated by the competitive role it plays in becoming a world centre. In line with the
postmodern approach where economical development is perceived as a cultural development, the city is being
conceived as an ‘enterprise’. An ever growing ‘urban machine’ operating with tactics, strategies, flexibility in
organization models and processes that lead to the impoverishment of the local inhabitants.
The video works ofmounir fatmientitled “Architecture Now” offer documents of a world of parallel and
competitive cities mentioned above. The mournful images of demolishment, the brightness or paleness of their
colors show the fusion with the power of the demolishing machines and bulldozers. The hierarchical aesthetic
realm in some of the images, beginning with the perception of shadow and darkness opening onto light, present
the fact that trees and plants alike are exposed to the violence that is taking place: Animals, plants and human
beings find their place under the category of living beings (anima). In the images showing the violence exerted
upon concrete, the claw of the excavator could be perceived as the hand or the prosthesis of the fundamental
element of the in-human machine, the capital. This hell raising activity has no solid reflection of a world that once
existed behind the house and door numbers. The existing ‘state of place’ (état des lieux) could be read as part of
the pain felt Without Anesthesia. The dormitory towns (cite-dortoirs) built by the policies of the Welfare State
once upon a time are no more than a nostalgia of a time long gone. Nothing more could be done than perceiving
this gaze seeking the emptiness where ghosts meander. We dwell in the question of Jean-François Lyotard
uttered when faced with postmodern times; “what is one to do but bear witness?”.
Without Anesthesia
By Aoife Rosenmeyer
2011
review on Art Agenda
mounir fatmi is an artist of resistance. It starts with his name, written lower case to challenge conventional
orthographies that do not accommodate him. He was born in Tangier and lives in Paris, and the idea of exile and
iconoclasm of Western, African, and Arab traditions appear frequently in his repertoire. His sculptural works tend
toward the monumental in their concise, authoritative tone and their use of symbolic shorthand, so the chaotic
din that greets the visitor behind the quiet shop-front of Analix Forever is surprising.
"Without Anaesthesia" is dominated by four video works generated during fatmi's lengthy residency at Le
Chaplin cultural centre in Mantes-la-Jolie. The "jolie" in the name is misleading, as today the town is best known
not for beauty but rather the huge Val Fourré housing development in the Parisian banlieu where television crews
go to capture suburban unrest and burning cars. The Val Fourré was built in the 1960s to meet a sharp increase in
demand for homes, but the developers' optimistic visions had clouded over even before the project was
complete. Stifled funding brought about denser housing than originally planned and the project was not
integrated into a broader transport infrastructure, leaving it marooned. Add to that poor sporting and
educational facilities, and middle class earners jumped ship, making way for recent immigrant populations whose
lack of linguistic integration isolated them further still. By the mid 1990s, the development had become a test
case for failed civic architecture; demolition was part of every proposed solution.
fatmi has collated film documentation of different elements of the gradual demolition of Le Val Fourré during
different periods of residency at Le Chaplin since 2002. The clanking of numerous heavily articulated bulldozers as
they grab and drop detritus is ceaseless, while different musical accompaniments, from Schoenberg to hip-hop,
weave through each video offering possible soundtracks, yet never fusing with conviction. Close framing shows
mechanical hands that pick and pull at walls and floors, cutting out the drivers and foremen, who are as absent
from the scene as the erstwhile residents. In the midst of these videos on three of the gallery walls is the all white
sculpture Underneath, 2007, a pristinely painted wooden table pierced by high-rise oblongs. On one screen a
series of colorful interiors caught in sunshine make a macabre riposte to the very notion that cosmetic
improvement could salve the situation.
fatmi's images are excruciatingly dumb and disquieting: surveillance footage that refuses to supply an
explanation for itself. Rather than giving voice to the residents of Val Fourré, it's fatmi's camera that does all the
talking here. The context of the artist's residency is saturated with tension, and you don't have to watch for long
to get a sense of guilt. What can and should an artist do there? In an interview, fatmi recently admitted that,
"producing an artistic proposition in response to what's happening in the world is so complicated and perhaps
pretentious." In light of the specific context, fatmi has balanced the aestheticization of economic migration's
repercussions (when he brings these scenes into an art gallery) with the refusal to stamp his aesthetic on it, by
presenting it simply and inconclusively.
Fuck Architects, the fundamental changes
By Pierre-Olivier Rollin
2008
mounir fatmi's approach displays an irrepressible desire to evade any form of indoctrination—whether the timehonored theoretical regimentation so habitual in the diminutive world of art, or, and above all (because the artist
is more interested in the world and its history than in art), the cultural, national, economic, religious and social
indoctrination that his art relentlessly lays bare. A work of art cannot develop in isolation; it still requires diverse
and prolific interactions which themselves create a dynamic frame of reference. Nevertheless, much like the artist
himself, all mounir fatmi's works are more a shifting construct than a rigid scheme, a continual process of
creation rather than an obsessive repetition of the same illusory vision.
The fundamental changes that our world has undergone over the past 30 years or so (more or less my generation
and that of mounir fatmi) have resulted in a new unstable world political order that Ignacio Ramonet calls the
“geopolitics of chaos.” He describes this new order as an indefinable transformation of forms of power wrought
by new conflicts and threats, destabilizing imbalances, massive technological development, the global
interdependence of trade and other factors. In this new global context, the frames of reference devised by past
societies, particularly those that nurtured the modernist myth, are now out of date, while the new models
fluctuate wildly.
Many authors, all illustrious and wise, have enthusiastically backed this assertion. However, I prefer to quote the
writer Péter Esterházy, who summarized the situation with a remarkably intelligent and humorous metaphor
about legendary Hungarian footballer Ferenc Puskas. “With the loss of Puskas,” he observes, “something has
disappeared from the world, has become different, has changed, is no longer what it was, and will never be
again…it was he who defined the world (I speak of the rectangle of the football pitch), the modern dream,
instead of picking out the best from all that is on offer and defined by the world.” Although Esterházy himself is
aware of the limits of his metaphor (he even proposes the antithesis; Puskas is the first postmodernist), it
provides an excellent point of comparison with the work of mounir fatmi who also likes to take seriously things
that are traditionally light-hearted, in order to destabilize all that claims to be serious.
mounir fatmi's work is part of a constant process of deconstruction of certainties and unstable reconstructions.
The artist therefore always refuses to submit to an established form; he has even dropped the upper case letters
from his name and surname. He takes great care to distance himself from certainties and to be “always
perplexed” about them, in the wise words of Paul Ardenne. There is no established form that he will accept
without patiently deconstructing it, reconfiguring it as he wishes it to be, without ever ceasing to be aware of the
limitations of his actions. In the current context, despite challenges to past frames of reference, previously
dominant forms have been transformed or camouflaged in order to survive and continue.
Fuck Architects. Chapter III
mounir fatmi scrutinizes a wide array of forms and models that reflect both his daily concerns and existential
questioning. The models may be those that fuel his exhibitions, those of the exhibition itself, those of the art
biennials in which he regularly features, or even those in the official catalogue, as mounir fatmi announced in the
catalogue for Next Flag.5 The exhibition triptych of Fuck Architects6 re-examines the artist’s questioning, this
time of the authoritative figure of architect. Here he critically appraises architects, and hence the myriad
functions of architecture, in the minutest detail. This flagrantly sacrilegious act earned him an old-style
inquisitorial reprimand from the New York Times7 when the first chapter of his triptych was unveiled at New
York’s Lombard-Freid Projects gallery in 2007.
Save Manhattan 03, a work created for Check List Luanda Pop, the first African entry in the 52nd Venice Biennial
in 2007, already laid the foundations for this approach: around fifty loudspeakers reproduced the (explosive)
sounds and (ghostly) visual landscape of this New York district prior to 11 September, 2001. From an arrogant
monument designed to rule the world (World Trade Centre!), to the dusty ruin with which it has become directly
associated, urban architecture is reduced to a now universal authoritarian symbol, with implications that
reverberate around the world. From New York to Beijing, via Abu Dhabi, a new mythology of contemporary
architecture is emerging that has not necessarily rid itself of the ideological fiefdom of the modernist period.
It is this new mythological form that comes under attack in the Fuck Architects exhibitions. For this,mounir
fatmiresorts to a real guerrilla strategy that, in technical terms, employs an asymmetry of resources, in this case
tempering the violence of his somewhat confrontational position. The artist makes use neither of videos, nor
large-screen projections, nor costly 3D simulations, nor any other leading-edge technology; he deliberately keeps
to the bare essentials: black on white wall paintings, wood sculptures, ready-made objects, co-axial cables, and
above all, stacks of VHS video cassettes, that formerly providential medium which has now been rendered
obsolete by the coming of the digital age.
The Ghetto is in Your Mind
The vast, three-part installation—Skyline, Ecran noir, Underneath—is a reconstruction of an imaginary urban
landscape with architectural elements made from black VHS cassettes strewn about by miles of magnetic tape.
Nearby, somewhere between geometric abstract painting (sometimes called “constructed”) and a topographical
map, a layout plan of urban buildings is reproduced in black on a white wall, while a table sculpture provides a
three-dimensional vision of the same architectural complex. Three modes of representation, three
reconstructions of the same reality, are juxtaposed, confusing rather than clarifying the situation. Reduced to a
black binary sign on a white background (Malevich and his supremacist ambitions are never far away), the
architecture reveals its underlying authoritarian mythology.
Although these three representations formally radicalize the exhibition theme, Monuments, a series of site
workers’ helmets nailed to the wall, bearing such names as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze, crystallizes the issue.
Used as protective headgear by the people employed on construction sites, including architects,8 the helmets, in
this case bearing the names of “deconstruction” philosophers, invite reflection and remembrance of their works,
as suggested by the title evoking the Latin word monumentum (from moneo “to recollect”). As constructions
(this time intellectual), the works of these philosophers become the tools for a necessary de-construction, which
must be kept constantly in mind if we are to escape from the authoritarian architectural projects that attempt to
govern human thought on a daily basis.
Indeed, that is what it is all about: keeping an acute awareness, in which the rational combines with flights of
folly, as subtly expressed in Tête dure: a vast mural that first attracted attention at the exhibition Traces du sacré,
in Paris. A vast arabesque depicts the gyrus of the brain, within which six (Arab) numerals indicate the brain
functions. At the same time, the serpentine line reproduces a sura from the Koran, inscribed in Arabic: “Do those
who know resemble those who do not?” The question is left open, and mounir fatmi refuses to answer it,
preferring each of us to find our very own detailed response.
Attempting to answer it is a tricky exercise in itself, as we find in Casse-tête pour un musulman modéré, a video
installation in which a Rubik’s cube, manipulated by progressively more oil-slicked hands, formally evokes another
authoritarian architecture: the Kaaba, the Arab word for any cubic construction. The most famous such
construction, which stands in the centre of the Holy Mosque of Mecca, houses in its eastern corner the Black
Stone—the point towards which all practicing Muslims turn when they pray. Discreetly, feeling his way, without
ever ceasing to be perplexed, even in the face of the most sensitive questions,mounir fatmibuilds his constructs
and constructs his thoughts, using flexible, modular and transformable forms that never fail to respect
everyone’s needs, as suggested by the organic spinal column painted on a wall.
The sinuous windings of the calligraphy in “Tête dure” directly contradict the cold rigidity of the videocassette
sections with their precise and rigorous contours. This deliberate juxtaposition of two such seemingly different
forms of communication (words and images), which, for the space of these exhibitions, share an amazingly
similar ornamental concern, is at first disturbing. Frédéric Bouglé rightly said that “by banning images of the
creatures of Allah and allowing neither painting nor sculpture, in a half-concealed manner the Muslim tradition
has veered towards ornamentation. As William Burroughs observed in Morocco, in Arab calligraphy images are
there but are concealed in writing.” Conversely video, while seen by certain fundamentalists as challenging the
ban on figurative art,10 is nevertheless a form of coded writing that can only be decoded by a magnetic tape
head.
The “poor” materials used bymounir fatmifor his sculptures, including an immense relief called Tête dure, also
include the co-axial cables needed to broadcast TV images. One sculpture, Mondes parallèles, made out of dozens
of these cables several meters long, joined at the start (or end) by adhesive tape and at the other end scattered
in chaotic disarray, distils the consequences of the boom in what we now refer to as new information and
communication technologies. Standing in contrast to the optimistic “global village” postulated by McLuhan in
the 1960s, who believed TV screens to be “a window on the world,” are exiled communities, sealed off from
everything that does not link them to an idealized motherland, which they know only from TV images. And the
artist throws in a stark reminder that: “the ghetto is in your mind.”
Let the Viewer Comment
The author that has perhaps taken the most original approach to the anomalous normative situation referred to
at the start of this review is the writer Edouard Glissant, with his concept of “Tout-Monde,” in other words the
entire world in its current diversity and chaos, so intertwined that it has become impossible to predict or react. In
this “Tout-monde,” which the author now deems unpredictable, we have two options: either we view the
inevitable changes, including the disappearance of certainties and stable reference points, as a harrowing and
destructuring loss; or we start to consider them as giving all individuals the freedom to forge singular, subjective,
specific and plural identities that are valid only at a given point in time and space.
The first option will inevitably engender a state of insecurity where “the exception becomes the rule, and war a
permanent condition.”12 The risk is a withdrawal into the nostalgic, even fanatical, celebration of old-style
models, as advocated by certain authorities in a bid to maintain or increase their influence through cultural,
nationalist, religious, or even economic and political references that hark back to the past. Here it is the
authoritarian figure of the architect thatmounir fatmichooses to expose.
In contrast, the second option gives precedence to the need for critical thinking, leaving individuals the freedom
(assuming they have the means) to make their own choices and to construct unstable models that may need to
be regularly reviewed. Glissant subscribes to this positive dynamic, not hesitating to affirm that: “We must also
become used to the idea that our identity will change profoundly through contact with others, as theirs will
through contact with us, without either party losing their identity in a multicultural melting pot. These are
difficult concepts to grasp and still more difficult to put into practice.”
Glissant paves the way for a dynamic understanding ofmounir fatmi'swork. Indeed, it is this very option that the
artist invites us to contemplate, this artist who sees himself as a “white man in West Africa and a potential
terrorist in all Western airports.”13 It is the option of a personal construct that is constantly recreated, porous
and mobile, inevitably barred by the obstacles placed in its way, as seen in the installation Tactiques de guerre: a
set of horse-jumping bars inscribed with words of military advice from Sun Zi, a Chinese strategist who lived in the
fifth century B.C., the incredible artistic beauty of which stands in stark contrast to the Machiavellian precepts
portrayed.
Each ofmounir fatmi'sworks, like each of the personal exhibitions in which he is always heavily involved, is
therefore an invitation to visitors, designed to provide them with a space in which to free their minds. Unlike
some projects, which all too often take an insidiously directive approach,mounir fatmialways treats the visitor as
a partner who is free to deconstruct and reconstruct his or her models. Each of his projects therefore tends to be
what Jean-Christophe Royoux called “moments of democratic deepening”14 that are intended to elicit
comments from those involved.
mounir fatmi, être perplexe ou ne pas être
By Paul Ardenne
2007
mounir fatmi does not want his name to be written with capital letters. Capriciousness? It is probably rather an
indirect way to enhance the distance with the possible embarrassing sides of identity - in this case, the desire to
trivialize himself or to decrease the determinism of his origins.
The artist was born in Tanger in 1970. As he grew up, religious authority in the Muslim world gradually increased
towards the fundamentalism that we know today. Growing up with the duality between a highly emancipated
city (Paul Bowles’ Tanger and psychedelic tradition) on one hand, and North-African culture, in those days sucked
up by tradition, was not exactly an easy thing to deal with and caused quite some suffering. The circumstances
carried a lot of weight for the artist’s cultural education. As a young painter, fatmi soon gained recognition in his
country. However, he started to cover and hide his own paintings: according to him, they depended too much on
vernacular criteria and gave evidence of his conditioning. He went into exile, but deliberately avoided putting
down roots by working at the same time in France, northern Europe and the United States. One of his ongoing
projects is a remake of Andy Warhol’s famous film Sleep. The lead role would be given to Salman Rushdie, the
author of the Satanic Verses, against whom a religious fatwa was pronounced. Is there any better way for mounir
fatmi to express what the ideal, to escape from history, really looks like?
A dubious combat
History is precisely what Without History is about, the installation that the artist is presenting this summer at the
Picasso Museum in Vallauris.
The installation is conceived as a transition between the outside of the museum and the paintings of Pablo
Picasso’s masterwork War and Peace inside. mounir fatmi's proposal is in a certain way the factual and symbolical
equivalent of a physical and meditative track. Obstacle poles, taken from a horse show jumping competition,
have been installed randomly, impeding the spectator from walking freely from the chapel towards the castle,
the museum’s sanctuary. This is where Picasso’s great oeuvre is exhibited on the walls, the visitors’ main reason
for getting all the way down here. This giant mikado set, decorated in black and white, could evoke an abstract
sculpture from the geometrical period. The words that the artist has written on the poles are excerpts from the
most famous military handbook of all times, the very lapidary Art of War by the Chinese Sun Tzu (5th century
before Christ). What do they say? ‘‘If the enemy is approaching in perfect silence, it is because he occupies a
natural stronghold. If he is far away and challenges you to battle, he wants you to advance. If the trees move, this
means that the enemy is advancing. The appearance of a number of obstacles in the midst of thick grass means
that the enemy wants to mislead you. If the birds take flight, the enemy is lying in ambush.’
The second element of the installation, next to the first one, features a ten minutes’ video projection titled The
Man without a Horse, Movement 3. What does it show? A man dressed like a horseman walking on foot through a
desolate, humid peri-urban landscape. The image looks quite incongruous: the character is clearly out of place, it
is as if he has been dropped there accidentally, or as if he were lost. What else? As he walks, the ‘man without a
horse’ kicks a book with his feet, pushing it forward to the rhythm of his footsteps. He kicks it violently and
systematically, as an act of revenge or despite, we don’t know. The atmosphere of the scene is severe: insistent
music, rain, loneliness... Stalker, the film by Andreï Tarkovski that is supposed to be set in the post-nuclear era,
could have served as a reference. The title of the book that is eventually destroyed by this shock treatment is
Histoire.
The present of an eternal illusion
The metaphor is deliberately easy to continue on. Human action? Or a calculated strategy, essentially aimed at
power, conquest, victory, control of the Others? It is commonly known that Sun Tzu’s Art of War that fatmi uses
is not only famous for its good advice in terms of war tactics. It is also a breviary for liberal economists. It is said
to be at least as formidable as that other great Book of Wisdom on power, Machiavelli’s Prince. The author shows
soundness (‘caution is always an excellent advisor’) and terror (‘intimidation is part of the triumph’) but also, in
Sun Tzu’s case, manipulation (‘to mislead the other is to dominate him’). And what about history? It is in the first
place the expression of power relations, a sum of less ‘memorable’ events (Aristoteles), subject to the dialectics
of tricks and force. Reason enough to get nervous and furious, indeed, at least if you understand ‘history’ in its
Hegelian sense – a sense that is definitely too positive, idealistic and unseasonable -, that big movement of time
by which Man (with a capital M) is supposed to open out, the ultimate sign of the triumph of Reason.
The plastic game with the obstacle course (a frequent resource inmounir fatmi'swork) also has a special meaning,
as you probably suspected. We make our way through things, that is correct. But what universe of rubble do we
want to penetrate? Where do we want to get in the end? In this sense, the actual theme of The Man without a
Horse also evokes the interrelated concepts of destiny without a finality, and action without rewards. After all,
the horseman no longer has a horse. The limit, that’s for sure! For reasons of accuracy, we have to mention that
the video projection The Man without a Horse, Movement 3 in Vallauris is a continuation of the two previous
episodes, filmed bymounir fatmi. In those episodes, the artist gives the same, unequivocal view of the loss of
man’s power when he is confronted with his destiny and the desire to control its course. The first movement of
The Man without a Horse is a short video with a repetitive, chopped montage reiterating the scene of a horseman
falling. Actually, he makes himself fall from his horse during an obstacle course. In the second movement the
artists films the same horseman wandering through the city without his horse. He is clearly not in his territory. It
is as if he has been projected out of his usual framework. The third movement, presented in Without History
features the horseman without a horse, destroying a book, titled Histoire. Analogically, we can say that history is
nothing but a fantastical construction that we are supposed to have control of, conquer and adapt to our wishes,
if we may believe the great philosophical whims of rationalist thinking.
Corrective art
As a whole,mounir fatmi'swork can be defined as an ‘aesthetisized’ collection of all contemporary forms of
violence: terrorism, intimidation policies, religious indoctrination and the domination by the liberal free market.
There is always a link between his creations: his view of Manhattan is ‘sculptured’ with VHS tapes, the same ones
that show the fanatical moudjahidin from Irak or Western hostages, imprisoned by Afghani fundamentalists, on
non-stop news stations; a black-and-white Rubik’s Cube in the shape of the Kaaba ; portraits of passers-by
showing bomb belts on their bodies; coaxial TV cables that he artist uses to make magnificent arabesques,
tributes in Jackson Pollock style or featuring miscellaneous titles from a contemporary library – manuals of good
manners, novels, philosophical or geopolitical essays, etc. They seem to suggest that everything is in everything,
and that everything can be kept.
In this context, Without History is a synthesis of the artist’s perplexity with regard to the authorities’ operations,
whether they are religious, political, artistic or cognitive authorities. There are strategies that allow confronting
the opposition in a less harmful way, guaranteeing at least survival. But it makes no sense. It doesn’t belong to
any ‘truth’ about the future. Whether the ‘great thinkers’ (Vico, Condorcet, the above-mentioned Hegel, Marx,
etc.) or the dreamers (remembering how an artist like Khlebnikov never gave up hope of penetrating the laws of
historical time by numerology) like it or not, history is and will always be the empire of contingency.
Considered in terms of power relations – since the Civil Code; since the different religious codes that rule today’s
world, not at all desecrated; since Davos, the capital of liberal economical fundamentalism; etc.mounir fatmi's
skeptical and elegantly seditious works are undoubtedly a scream of silence. Reason enough to get desperate?
Just like Sun Tzu wrote, ‘there is no such thing like a constantly favorable situation, just like water does not
always have the same form’. And Sun Tzu went on: ‘If someone can take advantage of a change in the enemy’s
situation, then that person is a genius.’
Although it does not uphold the powers that it denounces,mounir fatmi'sart at least gives us the dignity to say
‘no’ or to say that we have not been taken in. In his case, artistic practice is an appropriate correction.
interviews (selection)
Sacra Magnética, interview of mounir fatmi, 2010 by Oscar Gomez Poviña
Oscar Gomez Poviña: Why don't you want your name to be written in capital letters?
mounir fatmi: Refusing to write my name in capital letters is not a whim. For me it is a form of resistance against
the machine of capital letters and that each time I write my name the computer spell check underlines my name
in red. The first time that I was really surprised by the power of the capital letter was when I wrote the name of
god without a capital G and many people where very shocked.
OGP: We read that you said that "the Beat Generation saved me". What do you rescue from the whole Beat
Generation that you found so important at the time?
MF: The Beat Generation « saved » me in the sense that it gave me the desire to leave and the curiosity to explore
and experiment, to take the risk to be against the majority. It was liberating and opened up the possibility to
participate differently in society and not in a programmed version of society.
OGP: You also said that "in an accident, anyone would try to save someone". Do you feel like the "accidentsaving" dynamic has a crucial part in history? How do you weigh this two elements?
MF: Actually what I said was that in an accident people always try to save something, not specifically someone.
What I mean by this is that at the actual moment of crisis reality changes and our instincts change and we see the
essential things and what this actually means to us personally. We save something of ourselves or our life.
OGP: Fragility is a key element of your work. In this sense, is art something that one day must come to pass or
something that survives the test of time?
MF: I think there will always be a memory and trace of history that will remain. Whether the actual object survives
is another story. This is why fragility is a part of my work. A object/work of art has a life cycle like everything else
but what remains is our memory of that work.
OGP: What is your view about Salman Rushdie? Why is he the subject of your remake of Andy Warhol's film Sleep?
MF: Salman Rushdie is an important figure for me as a true voice of critical thinking. He was the first to take the
risk to criticize the Koran in « The Satanic Verses. » He opened a door that showed the that the Arab world lacked
self-critique and a sense of humor. He is the subject in the film because on the one hand he is an important figure
but also to show that he is able to sleep, that he can be a peace and not under threat as he was for so long.
OGP: In an interview, you said that art would function as anti-missiles shields. What do you think is the place of art
in global politics?
MF: This is hard to respond here in a couple of sentences because this phrase is related to a much larger
idea/project I have about architecture and the construction of museums and large buildings in the Gulf countries.
That this new architecture is very symbolic- for example, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Guggenheim Dubai, which in
a sense serves a protection for these countries.
I highly doubt that the American or British army will launch missiles on the Guggenheim Dubai, or that the French
army will attack the Louvre in Tehran Abu Dhabi. I think that even in a war situation, the population of these
countries will definitely choose to hide inside of these museums instead of running for the mosques.
State of Emergency, interview of mounir fatmi, 2007 by Jérôme Sans
Jérôme Sans: If you had to define your work in one word, what would it be?
mounir fatmi : It would be urgency. I feel as though I function like an ambulance, which intervenes when there
has been an accident. I am incapable of doing anything without a sense of urgency.
JS: What was your first accident?
MF: My birth. I did not want to come out of my mother’s womb. I was the last of her children and she decided to
stop after me because she nearly died giving birth.
JS: What led you to become an artist?
MF: I have the feeling that I have always wanted to be one. At the age of four, I said that I wanted to become a
painter. It was as if I had been programmed to do so. There was no alternative. At the age of 17, I met Paul Bowles
and at 29, I made a film with him called Fragments and Solitude. These were the last images of his life, as if we
had unconsciously filmed his death. The Beat Generation saved me: Paul Bowles, reading Burroughs, Brion Gysin.
They gave me another vision of life. I was born in Tangier in a neighborhood called Casabarata, which means ”the
cheapest house”. We lived next to the flea market and that is where I saw the Mona Lisa for the first time –
upside-down gradually being eaten by a sheep. The vision that I have of art is of an upside-down Mona Lisa next
to a sheep that is eating her hands. It is confusing perhaps, but that is what gave me the desire to do what I do
today.
JS: But how did you have access to this contemporary culture when you were living in Tangier?
MF: Tangier is an international city that was the stomping ground of the Beat Generation and many other artists.
It was easier to meet Paul Bowles in Tangier than in New York. Their presence made it possible to have access to
their literature. Paul Bowles spoke Arabic very well. He was an imposing, generous and highly intelligent man.
One day we went to the Maison Rouge. There was a play called “I Like America,” which I liked a great deal, and
straight away he asked me “Why do you like America? Is it still possible to like America?” Yes, I like that America,
the America of Paul Bowles, Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac – the people who
changed the lives of many, not only in Europe, but also here in Morocco. And I am proud to tell myself that it was
here in Morocco, in Tangier, that they found the energy to create.
JS: How did you realize this desire to be an artist?
MF: I started at the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca - I lasted about three months, and then I went to Rome, to
the School of Fine Arts. That was really a surprise for me, at seventeen years old, to find myself drawing from
nude models. I found myself in front of this sublime, nude woman, who I was obliged to scrutinize in detail,
despite having been educated never to look [at women]. That was for me, a real culture shock. To look or not to
look? I decided to open my eyes. One year later I was visiting Morocco and my father found these nude drawings
and he asked me, ”is this what you have been doing in Rome?” For him, this was totally degrading. I showed my
father images of paintings by Picasso, Toulouse Lautrec, with scenes of nudes from the front and back, and asked
him what he thought. He responded, ”I see prostitutes.” Instead of being frustrated by this, I found it
extraordinary that through his refusal of what I was doing, he gave me another vision of art and the masterpieces
that I had always idealized. So that today, when I look at a painting in the museum, I can look at it as a work of art
- the details of the body, as much as I can see three prostitutes with their legs spread.
JS: Can you tell us about your first work?
MF: There was a fountain in the Esperanza neighborhood of Casablanca, which was also called the Croix Rouge
and which up until the early 1980s was frequented by prostitutes. The fountain regularly broke down, but all the
residents fought to keep it. I could see it from my bedroom window and I decided to paint it. The neighborhood
tailor saw my painting and asked me to give it to him and I said, ”I’ll sell it to you for 17 dirhams.” He agreed.
JS: Was the fountain also a reference to Marcel Duchamp?
MF: No. Not at all. I love to watch water moving. It is like watching a spectacle that will not let me go. Particularly
in Africa, where water is like gold.
JS: You said you were saved by the Beat Generation and that you like America for the same reason. Is that why
you called several of your works ”Save Manhattan”?
MF: In an accident, anyone would try to save someone. I react the same way in my life. I was married twice, two
divorces, three nervous breakdowns. It is always in these extreme situations where we can save something, in
part because we think everything is finished. Someone recently asked me the following question, ”But why do
you want to save Manhattan and not Casablanca (where my parents were living)?”
I responded, ”I think that if we can succeed in saving Manhattan, we would also be able to save Afghanistan, Iraq,
in other words, a lot of people. Save Manhattan represents the idea of going back to the source of the
resuscitation to see what there is left in the body and what we can get out of it [to save it]. There is nothing to
save in Casablanca… I am sorry to say that, but it’s the truth.
JS: Elements in your work are often interdependent as if you want to signify that, as in a game of dominoes, the
failure of a single piece could cause everything to collapse.
MF: I have always been fascinated by that upside-down Mona Lisa next to the sheep I mentioned before. If we
dropped the real Mona Lisa on the ground it would be an incredible work. The fact that it is protected,
surrounded by glass, creates the impression that all of these people who look at her, who photograph her, are
like animals with this rather sexual and violent hope of raping her. The problem with the Mona Lisa is that it is not
fragile. I had to overcome many obstacles before I could go and see it at the Louvre. I had to study; I had to get a
visa to leave Morocco. I was disappointed to see that it lacked fragility, because that is what I try to find in my
work. I try to ensure that my works look both solid and liable to collapse at any moment. Save Manhattan 3, for
example, is composed of loudspeakers placed on the ground; a spotlight projects onto it to create the skyline
shadow against the opposite wall; without the light, the piece collapses, as if it is only revealed through its
shadows.
JS: ”Save Manhattan” is a triptych that combines three tools of contemporary media manipulation. Can you
describe these three installations?
MF: Save Manhattan represents the New York skyline through three universes, three components, and three
installations. The first piece is structured by a literature created out of the September 11 catastrophes- essentially
books that would never have existed without that event. The second installation uses empty VHS videocassettes
to signify the absence of images. The images of the catastrophe have been shown so often that there is no
longer any need to show them because the whole world has them engraved in their memory. And the third
consists of speakers that are placed on the floor and project the sounds of New York; recorded noises from the
morning, the afternoon, the evening, in the street and in the subway, like film sound effects that give the feeling
of being in the heart of the city.
JS: You have made several pieces with bars used for horse jumps, painted in the colors of different national flags.
Is that a way of saying that nationalism is an obstacle?
MF: Some are painted with color and others in black and white. The last “Obstacle” installation, which I did for
the Musée National Pablo Picasso in Vallauris, has phrases written along the bars. One of them says: ”If you are
an enemy, I will kill you for money; if you are a friend, I will kill you for nothing.” The viewer is faced with a
proposition that gives them no choice. They are faced with an obstacle they are unable to neither move around
nor go over without running the risk of falling down. And if they don’t take any risks, they remain passive before
the obstacle that is now barring their way. I am also in the process of making these obstacle bars with crystal for
a future exhibition. Because of its extreme fragility, the viewer is faced with even greater uncertainty and tension
when confronting the work. The potential fragility is within reach, right in front of you.
JS: For you, what is the metaphor of the obstacle?
MF: For me, the obstacle is a mathematical equation which allows for many levels of reading. It can be regarded
in the literal sense as something that blocks the way or impedes movement, and in a figurative sense as
something that prevents action or the achievement of a result. Above all however, the obstacle is an artwork
work: fragile, unstable, and always threatened with possible collapse. It is a sculpture that embodies the neoplastic synthesis of form, content, and color. My aim was to make the object the very principle of its aesthetic
proposition.
JS: Are the colors you use references to flags?
MF: Sometimes the colors refer to flags, but never forget that the work is above all a plastic and aesthetic
proposition. It is up to the viewers to attempt a possible deciphering.
JS: Your work is not radically political, but it plays on symbols. How would you define your artistic approach to
politics?
MF: The fact of being from an Arab country immediately forces a political question. I am from a region that is on
the watch list of the American government and that is considered highly dangerous. We are dependent upon the
decisions of others. Basically this question exists whenever I travel with my Moroccan passport which is written
right to left in Arabic, places me in a line for the Other, and creates suspicious looks by immigration security and
their terrorist profile fantasy. In this situation I am fully in the political question but it is not essential to my work
or in my work. What interests me are the possibilities of translating it into an artistic proposition, a form behind
which we can find political links. I do not think that one can create a political work but rather, one can use a
political context within which the work can evolve.
JS: Who are some of the artists with whom you feel close to in terms of approach or attitude?
MF: There are many artists who I could cite but I cannot recall all of them at the moment. Jackson Pollack, Brian
Gysin, or Salman Rushdie who, for example, has inspired me with the idea of remaking Andy Warhol’s film Sleep,
using Rushdie as the actor. I have worked three years on this project already. I sent letters to his editors in New
York, with no response. I respect the fact that he probably has no desire to sleep in front of a Moroccan who is
filming him, so I have changed the concept and decided to make a six hour film, still using the same scenario but
using 3-D digital imaging. It is a story about him and that speaks about his virtual reality due to the fatwa placed
on him that called for his execution. Rushdie truly shook up and changed many things in the arab-muslim world,
and he basically created the idea of self-criticism within the Arab world.
JS: How do you see the situation in the Arab world today?
MF: It is a world lacking in archives; a world where so many things have disappeared that it is the driving force of
its present activity. This is what explains the dynamics of a city like Dubai or Abu Dhabi, where today one can
plant palm trees in the middle of the sea, where there is a persistent urge to create and fill museums like the
Louvre and the Guggenheim. The Arab world is a region where hotels remain 70% vacant because of fears of
terrorism. I have an idea to use some of these hotels for a residency project and send European and American
artists to stay for a time and conceptually speaking, bring together artists, tourists and terrorists into the same
surroundings. At this moment I think that art has rejoined politics.
I think that this desire for the Arab countries to buy into the big museums is not only a desire for culture. It must
be said that the Arab countries can no longer have weapons of destruction-even for their own protection, so they
are only left with the ability to buy and build these museums that will, in the near future, start to function like
anti-missile shields. I highly doubt that the American or British army will launch missiles on the Guggenheim Abu
Dhabi, or that the French army will attack the Louvre in Tehran or Tripoli. I think that even in a war situation, the
population of these countries will definitely choose to hide inside of these museums instead of running for the
mosques. I know that is a bit science fiction, but well, I guess that is the side of my [William] Burroughs
personality.
Prensa/Press
Selección / Selection
LE FIGARO, November 2015
Attentats: Mounr Fatmi évoque “un monde qu’on ne veux pas voir”.
TELQUEL, October 2015
Blasphème: Hors zone de débat
TRENDS, Mars 2015
Interview exclusive: L’art, le monde et la pensée critique selon mounir fatmi
Revista Mirall, 15 de enero de 2015 / January 15th 2015, Joan Vila i Boix
Qui té por de mounir fatmi? Who is afraid of mounir fatmi?
Revista Mirall, 15 de enero de 2015 / January 15th 2015, Joan Vila i Boix
Qui té por de mounir fatmi? Who is afraid of mounir fatmi?
ABC-Culturas, 27 de diciembre de 2014 / December 27th 2014
Anna Mª Guasch, “Un cartel de nombres internacionales”
La Vanguardia, 20 de diciembre de 2014 / December 20th 2014
Juan Bufill, “ Mounir Fatmi reflexiona en ADN sobre la intolerancia y el colonialismo”
Terrart. Contemporary Ceramic Review. Primer trimestre 2014 / First semester of 2014
Mercè Coma, ´Mounir Fatmi´ [Mounir Fatmi]
Die Presse.com, 26 de abril de 2014 / April 24th 2014
Sabine B.Vogel, Brüssel: Der Kurator soll es richten
Diptyk , “Il faut se battre”, Julie Estève, February/March 2014
The National, “Art without prejudice”, Ben East, 30 de abril de 2013 /April 30th 2013
Cuadernos de Cine / Art et Cinéma Espagne, Febreo 2013 / February ,2013
Nicole Brénez: “El cine según los artistas plásticos”
Le Monde, 6 de octubre 2012 / October 6th, 2012
“En invoquant le blasphème, c’est la liberté qui est visée”
Le Figaro, 10 de octubre 2012 / October 10th, 2012
Valérie Sasportas: “L’Institut du monde arabe censure une oeuvre sur Rushdie”
POLY Septiembre 2012 / September 2012
“Carte Blanche à Mounir Fatmi”

Obras - Galeria ADN

Transcription

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