Review

Love letter to an Arab man

29.11.2016 |

Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Les hommes de la plage, 2016, video, installation on 4 screens, ed 1/3, © All rights reserved

Delivering artwork that will become a basis for dialogue – such is the aim of Zoulikha Bouabdellah’s exhibition Lettre d’amour à un homme arabe [Love letter to an Arab man], presented at the Mathias Coullaud Gallery in Paris. The artist was born in 1977 in Moscow, and lives and works in Morocco after spending many years in France – an international career which deeply influences her multifocal work.

Love letter to an Arab man - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Chasteté de Joseph (9), 2016, Chinese ink on paper, 100 x 73 cm, © All rights reserved © Photo : Louis Delbaere

Love letter to an Arab man - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Exhibition view Love letter to an Arab man, at the Mathias Coullaud Gallery © All rights reserved

The multiplicity of questionings and points of view in her works coincides with the multiplicity of mediums used. The words of a letter written by the artist are what strikes us immediately as we enter the exhibition space, as well as the sound that greets visitors, guiding them towards Les hommes de la plage [The Men of the Beach, 2016].
This piece, which comprises four videos showing the slow-motion movements of men gathered on a beach in Casablanca, seems at first to focus on the beauty and elegance of their movements. However, one starts to question the nature of the artist’s intended message when one hears the appending score1. The way the videos are shown also contributes to the feeling of oppression. Presented symmetrically, they give the impression that the beach is an island caught between two oceans. By confining these men to this exitless space, the artist not only questions the freedom of Arab men today, but also the freedom of women, of the desire they might feel for these men, and the possibility they have of expressing it.

Love letter to an Arab man - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Les hommes de la plage, 2016, video, installation on 4 screens, ed 1/3, © All rights reserved

The film installation directly echoes the “lacy” Indian ink pieces shown alongside it, which are inspired by the chastity of Joseph2 as he resists the temptation of Potiphar’s wife. The form given to the various interventions in the exhibition and the fundamental subjects the artist tackles complete each other and, in doing so, like the lace, reveal and magnify the themes that run throughout her work: freedom, desire, love, and the place and commitment of both women and men.

At the Mathias Coullaud Gallery, in Paris, to 04 November until 22 December 2016.

1
Music: Patrick Burgan, Dionysos.

2
Koran: Sura 12, verse 25 to 28; Bible: Genesis 39, verse 12 to 18.

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