Latifa Echakhch & Zineb Sedira. For a Brief Moment […] Several Times
03 Jun - 17 Jul 2022
Latifa Echakhch, Several times, you’re so cool, 2019 wool carpet, ink, Sonos loudspeaker, Jonathan Bree Sleepwalking vinyl record, Parisienne yellow cigarette pack, two wine glasses, iPhone 240 × 160 cm, unique Courtesy the artist and Dvir Gallery. Zineb Sedira, For a Brief Moment the World Was on Fire … and We Have Come Back (detail: Les UNES (journaux Algériens), 2019 © Zineb Sedira / DACS, London Photo: archives kamel mennour Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris
At a time when borders have to be fought for and defended, but an affiliation to only one nation is no longer the rule, the collaborative project between Latifa Echakhch and Zineb Sedira could not be more relevant. For a long time, the two artists have been connected by a close friendship along with a great interest in each other’s work. This year, both artists have been invited to the Venice Biennale to represent France (Zineb Sedira) and Switzerland (Latifa Echakhch).
Though the exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland is the artists’ first project of this type, it is more than consistent within their oeuvre: an invitation to enter into a dialogue, an artistic conversation with each other’s work, preserving its autonomy while connecting it to a distinctive narrative; at the same time, it is an open, gentle invitation to the visitors to embark on a dense trail of personal and collective memories, to settle down, wonder and remember together—both the presence and the absence of people, film clips, songs, texts, smells, images.
The exhibition resembles two overlaying memories of moments from the artists’ pasts, allowing a collective remembrance to become possible. It almost feels like moving through a film set, a journey through time and space—paused in a moment that is open for visitors to go through. The two artists thus open up a multilayered space of experiences that succeeds in directing our perception towards fundamental themes of identity and affiliation, as well as of individual and collective memory.
Curator: Ines Goldbach
Though the exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland is the artists’ first project of this type, it is more than consistent within their oeuvre: an invitation to enter into a dialogue, an artistic conversation with each other’s work, preserving its autonomy while connecting it to a distinctive narrative; at the same time, it is an open, gentle invitation to the visitors to embark on a dense trail of personal and collective memories, to settle down, wonder and remember together—both the presence and the absence of people, film clips, songs, texts, smells, images.
The exhibition resembles two overlaying memories of moments from the artists’ pasts, allowing a collective remembrance to become possible. It almost feels like moving through a film set, a journey through time and space—paused in a moment that is open for visitors to go through. The two artists thus open up a multilayered space of experiences that succeeds in directing our perception towards fundamental themes of identity and affiliation, as well as of individual and collective memory.
Curator: Ines Goldbach