This interview is between Cindy Sissokho (CS) and the artists Sonia Merabet (SM) and Abdo Shanan (AS) about their exhibition Untold at the Rhizome Gallery in Alger that is currently opened until the 8^th March 2021.

The exhibition was curated by Myriam Amroun and Walid Aidoud and was developed as part of Remchet 3in, a project in partnership with Dima Cinema. The show opens space for a discussion on the violence towards women in the context of Algeria and about the consequences that they generate directly on the subjects: between crossed illustrations, processes of psychic de-configuration, or terrors brought from seeing a shadow, the shadow of the self.¹

In this interview, the two exhibited photographic series are analysed: Séquelles Bleues (The Blue Wounds) par Sonia Merabet et Mémoire (Memories) par Abdo Shanan.

CS: What were your initial thoughts and approaches about the exhibition’s theme in relation to the discourses that are related to your artistic practice? and how is this subject complementary to your photography work and mission as archive and memory?

SM: I had a lot of apprehension about meeting the expectations when working on this subject as it sits very close to me. I had two distinct approaches and, as a result, two photographic series. The first one was published as part of the digital campaign by Dima Cinema, in which I wanted to stay closer to reality and stay loyal to the perception of violence that we all have, without needing to capture it in an obvious way. I tried to work with the environment and the exhausting psychological state of the victim in a similar way than film editing. On the contrary, with the second series Séquelles Bleues (The Blue Wounds, that is exhibited to the rhizome Gallery), I wanted to take the viewers by surprise and have an opposite approach to what we expect for this theme. Unfortunately, this violence is normalised in Algeria. The victims are accused of talking about this taboo either too much or badly.

My approach for the exhibited series was as a result of a reflection about how to raise awareness differently without using usual procedures of shocking with violent and direct representations. I chose to explore this with more subtlety. Black isn’t just an aesthetic choice. I wanted to highlight the blue in the shadows. The shadows being the main visual metaphor for the wounds. Red was a more obvious choice in regard to the contradictory feelings that it relates to.

AS: As an artist and photographer I always need to find a personal point of connection with the issues that I work with, or something that triggers me. In this case, reading the stories² narrated by women who endured violence in their life was fundamental. I was struck by the level of details within their stories, all told from memory. They just didn’t forget violent moments, and they are still present in their minds and affecting their lives.

Furthermore, I was diving into their stories trying to imagine how it would feel to remember these traumatic events. What does a memory feel like? Specifically, when the memory becomes violent itself. Their memories are triggered by anything, anywhere and at any time. How could anyone go through this? Is it something that they would share openly with other people or is it something that is intimate and difficult to speak about because it is also exhausting to talk about it?

CS: Violence is a visible and invisible act. According to my observations, you both worked with a distinctive visual poetry – the shadows in Sonia’s portraits in contrary to the light and blinding flashes in Abdo’s polaroid, as a metaphor to recollections. You are both doing so through capturing the intimacy and living spaces of the victims, the unsaid things in relation to the seriousness of the narratives that are represented in a more or less direct way. Could you tell us more about your choice and techniques used in order to represent the violence, as well as the message that you wished to bring to light or shift?

SM: I worked with a model, the actress Meriem Medjkane as she brings out strength and delicacy. The red light emphasises these personality traits, as well as expressing more aggressiveness and sensuality. The most important element in the series are the shadows because I think that violence, no matter what they are, are dealt with in a specific time, and if it is physical violence, the body can recover from it differently.

However, psychological wounds remain like a shadow that follows us everywhere: the light of the shadow is blue, which explains the title of the series. The second idea comes from the fight that we have against the wound, that we carry within ourselves to move on. The poses are fluid, in constant movement in order to express the desire to reconnect with one’s body, as well as to be liberated from what holds us back because of the trauma.

AS: It is the first time that I worked with the installation format. For this exhibition I thought that it was the most suitable way to convey the ideas I wanted the public to grasp. How can we show something that we cannot see – only the person remembering the violent events can see? The person who endured violence only knows how a memory could be violent. I needed to immerse the viewers within the women’s experience, even though I know that I cannot fully do so. I could only build a bridge between the viewer and the women. With this series, I hope that the viewer will start to understand, debate, or see things from a different perspective. I think this is my role as an artist.

My aim with this installation was to create a condition in which the viewer is uncomfortable and disorientated. We decided to build a black box in which the photographs are projected with a flow of images that would make it hard to understand and follow. It includes a sound that permanently makes the viewer on the edge trying to find a connection between what they hear and what they see. With these circumstances I wanted the viewer to feel as if trapped in the head of the victim who is forced to remember.

Untold

Sonia Merabet / Abdo Shanan

On view through 8 March

Gallery rhizome

82, rue Didouche Mourad, Alger

contact@rhizome.agency

www.rhizome.gallery

The post Untold: a photography response to the violence towards women in Algeria appeared first on Artskop.

With his foray into the world of painting Bardi paints a picture of our societies, reflecting without indulgence on what man does to himself and his socio-cultural environment.

From its inception, his pictorial world has been populated by strange and grotesque characters. His animals and entities that float and hover in space shamelessly displaying their deformities and their mocking gazes. Laughing at the world, ironic, they carry the vanity, arrogance, ambition, pride and other aspirations of men. A certain sense of humor, however, mitigates the harshness of this irony and a tenderness shine through what is at times harsh criticism. There is a tenderness for human weakness which Bardi derides as if to defuse the drama of reality.

Stasis is the title chosen by the artist for this exhibition the strength of the works of which lies in their ability to lay bare the contradictions that run through and disturbs our lives. By Stasis the Greeks designated a political, moral and social crisis resulting from a conflict internal to a city-state (the Greek Polis). It is also the name of the god who embodies civil war and disagreement among a people. That is what Bardi’s work is about: those historic moments that shook the daily lives of thousands of people.

Algerians—whom Bardi represents with suffering bodies—spread out, dismembered at the same time human and monsters. Sensitive to the socio-political conflicts that have invaded the world today, in his recent works, where the beauty and the ugliness of men are intertwined, Bardi charges these grotesque works of art with the critical role of provoking a reaction in the viewer at once comical, bitter and anxious. They constitute a dissent from the usual classical moral, the socio-cultural and aesthetic standards that, as a result, they call into question.¹

Founded in 2017, Rhizome has continued to evolve as a non-physical space for three years. The “rhizome” model as a cultural institution was initially inspired by rhizomatic thought developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. A concept which apprehends multiplicities, in opposition to the hierarchical and arborescent conception of knowledge. It sees culture and the arts as a map or a wide range of influences and fosters a nomadic system of growth and dissemination. This conception has never had more meaning and relevance than in the context (local and global) in which we are currently living, that of the movement.

The artist readily acknowledges that he exists “… in derision and caricature» which is the only way for him to «sublimate the present» and express a position towards the political, social or cultural context. Admittedly, his works are inhabited by deformed human figures that can be interpreted as a provocation because they are deliberately ambiguous, but this vision of the real carries an expression of social disappointment. These disarticulated, deformed, mutilated bodies are those «of the people I meet every day. These are the tired bodies of Algerian workers in whose faces that I see expressed only weariness and dull eyes as if everyone is waiting for the messiah.”

Excerpt from the text by Nadira Laggoune- Aklouche, art critic and independent curator.

To find out more about rhizome, please visit the gallery page on Artskop and gallery’s website.

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