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Lot Essay
"By a process of wandering, I thus revisit this drawing technique, a bit like a bad student: the geometry becomes chaotic, the symmetry is undermined, and the absolute is therefore impossible."
(Latifa Echakhch, quoted on https://www.vipart.com).
Born in Morocco, but raised in France from the age of three, Latifa Echakhch draws on objects and motifs relating to her Moroccan heritage and to European and American Post-War art. Yet, as a result of her background, her associations with cultural mementos are morphed; transformed into a ghostly absence where nostalgia should appear, the artist is forced to constantly re-imagine, deconstruct and re-evaluate identity and cultural symbols, decontextualizing cultural relics or objects loaded with cultural and political saliency into minimalist worthless objects. Through this approach, Echakhch amplifies post-colonial contradictions and norms, encouraging the viewer to go beyond a simple
interpretation and questions the status of the individual faced with globalism.
In 2007, Le Magasin contemporary art centre in Grenoble invited the artist to produce her first major solo exhibition. The result was Dérives inspired by an ornamental star shaped pattern, a reference to the classical decoration often found on the architectural vocabulary of her native Morocco, an itinerary of black lines was drawn with bands of tar, marking out a path that reorganized the space and which one was free to follow or not. The pattern, infinitely reproducible, conjure the spirit and sense of the divine and absolute, but by
tracing her own paths from a decomposed/deconstructed star the idea of infinite reproduction no longer stands.
Resulting from this installation piece, the artist sought to further develop this notion by pushing the boundaries to create a complex set of signs symbols and patterns in the Dérives series, to which the present work Dérives 2 belongs. Literally
meaning 'drift,' Dérives references the Situationists, a group based in France in the 1950s which called for 'détournement' (subverting elements of popular culture) amongst other Marxist principles. Echakhch's choice of motif suggests an inner identification with architecture and within the bold thick black muddled lines against the stark white background, the artist takes the liberty of getting lost in
ornamentation, disobeying the strict principles that are usually associated with arabesque and their divine proportions in a psycho-geological path.
Delicate yet powerful in its simplicity, Dérives 2 reflects the profound cultural tensions of today's world, the conflict between identity and universality or between singularity and community. By simplifying and shifting the format of such a deep cultural tradition, she thus empties the star motif of its cultural charge and forces the viewer to reinterpret these visuals to their own experience and critical thinking.
(Latifa Echakhch, quoted on https://www.vipart.com).
Born in Morocco, but raised in France from the age of three, Latifa Echakhch draws on objects and motifs relating to her Moroccan heritage and to European and American Post-War art. Yet, as a result of her background, her associations with cultural mementos are morphed; transformed into a ghostly absence where nostalgia should appear, the artist is forced to constantly re-imagine, deconstruct and re-evaluate identity and cultural symbols, decontextualizing cultural relics or objects loaded with cultural and political saliency into minimalist worthless objects. Through this approach, Echakhch amplifies post-colonial contradictions and norms, encouraging the viewer to go beyond a simple
interpretation and questions the status of the individual faced with globalism.
In 2007, Le Magasin contemporary art centre in Grenoble invited the artist to produce her first major solo exhibition. The result was Dérives inspired by an ornamental star shaped pattern, a reference to the classical decoration often found on the architectural vocabulary of her native Morocco, an itinerary of black lines was drawn with bands of tar, marking out a path that reorganized the space and which one was free to follow or not. The pattern, infinitely reproducible, conjure the spirit and sense of the divine and absolute, but by
tracing her own paths from a decomposed/deconstructed star the idea of infinite reproduction no longer stands.
Resulting from this installation piece, the artist sought to further develop this notion by pushing the boundaries to create a complex set of signs symbols and patterns in the Dérives series, to which the present work Dérives 2 belongs. Literally
meaning 'drift,' Dérives references the Situationists, a group based in France in the 1950s which called for 'détournement' (subverting elements of popular culture) amongst other Marxist principles. Echakhch's choice of motif suggests an inner identification with architecture and within the bold thick black muddled lines against the stark white background, the artist takes the liberty of getting lost in
ornamentation, disobeying the strict principles that are usually associated with arabesque and their divine proportions in a psycho-geological path.
Delicate yet powerful in its simplicity, Dérives 2 reflects the profound cultural tensions of today's world, the conflict between identity and universality or between singularity and community. By simplifying and shifting the format of such a deep cultural tradition, she thus empties the star motif of its cultural charge and forces the viewer to reinterpret these visuals to their own experience and critical thinking.