Madrugada, by André Romão (Portugal, 1984), greets the visitor in suspended silence. Meaning “dawn” in Portuguese, the artwork is composed of a bronze hand overlooking six bells, referring both to the civil function of the tocsin in past centuries (an alarm bell announcing danger) and to more ceremonial functions in certain religions (Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism), as well as to pagan practices in ancient Rome (a prophylactic function). Positioned as a repellent to hostile forces, the work acts as protection and a call to vigilance.
In the room on the right, the series Homeless Colors by Taysir Batniji (Palestine, 1966) consists of seven works on paper. Living in Paris but originally from Gaza, the artist uses pencils, felt-tip pens, and pens found in the street as pretexts for a meditative, obsessive exercise that allows him to withdraw from the terrible reality he has been facing since October 2023. The astonishment produced by the succession of collective and intimate grief and traumas experienced, leaves no room for words. Through an implacable, systematic gesture, he saturates the paper’s surface until the felt-tip pen or pencil he has found is completely exhausted, thus tending towards a symbolic monochrome.
Facing this series, three works by Stéphanie Saadé (Lebanon, 1983) refer to her native country and her personal history. Building a Home with Time is a long necklace composed of 2,832 beads corresponding to the number of days between the artist’s birth and the official end date of the Lebanese civil war. On the floor, Artificial Nostalgia takes the form of a fragile mound carrying memories and uprooting: the key to the artist’s childhood home in Beirut is planted in a small pile of earth coming from the place where she was living when the work was created. The embroidery We’ve Been Swallowed by Our Houses, dating from 2020, evokes the change in perception of space due to confinement. Our relationship with space and time was completely disrupted during that pandemic year. The artist measured her apartment in Beirut, drew its floor plan, and transformed it into a labyrinth the size of a tablecloth for the apartment’s dining room table. The spiral embroidery motifs come from a Syrian tradition used by women who were forced to flee their country and their homes. Here, Stéphanie Saadé refers as much to mythology as to the very intimate sphere. How can one become lost within the space that should be most familiar? How can the home, supposedly a place of protection, lead to disorientation or even psychological wandering? The dimension of confinement suggested by Stéphanie Saadé could also be read in another way, by questioning domestic and intra-family violence, invisible to the outside world yet so psychologically devastating.
How can we not make a connection with the series of watercolors painted by Céline Cuvelier (Belgium, 1988) on display in the left-hand room? With a seemingly peaceful appearance, each watercolor represents an apartment or a house reproduced from a press photograph illustrating the home of a woman who committed infanticide. Hung in a rhythm that encircles the viewer like an endless system, these watercolors overturn the usual relationship with press images that claim neutrality. It is by knowing what lies behind the image that the disturbance sets in. By choosing to represent the unrepresentable under a banal façade, the artist questions how our society shows and sees. The subject of Céline Cuvelier is not the news item — however abominable and incomprehensible it may be — but rather the questioning of how images function in our society. She shifts the perspective and destabilizes our perception, making the banality of these images unbearable. Their framing is in total contrast with the invisible horror they contain. Showing and concealing at the same time. Through these watercolors, she portrays these mothers—plunged into abyssal distress and lost to the point of committing the ultimate act—back into the normality of everyday life. She places them back into our world, into our neighborhood, without judgment. She reintegrates them into our society and asks a fundamental question: “What does society mean today, and how do we form it?”
In the back room, a long installation by Chaim van Luit (Netherlands, 1985) literally divides the space in two with a line of cement studded with a multitude of fragments of colored glass. An aggressive, even dangerous installation, Concrete Faith, Fragile Minds is placed on the floor and forces visitors to choose whether or not to step over the work. Reminiscent ofcertain artistic practices (minimalism or land art), the installation plays on several levels. One could attempt to draw a link with the thinking of philosopher Michel Foucault, who analyzed surveillance, confinement, and spatial control, highlighting the desire to regulate individuals through authoritarian architectures. The particularity of Chaim van Luit’s work lies in the fact that the shards of glass come from archaeological excavations in the south of the Netherlands which uncovered a workshop that had been producing stained glass since the late Middle Ages. The work therefore carries a double movement: the clear reference to the anti-intrusion protection system found on perimeter walls of buildings countered by resistance in a spiritual interpretation, where the divine presence is active—although fragmented—in chaos. It stages a tension between protecting possessions and the distribution of being. The (physical) distancing and (spiritual) rapprochement give this work a strong interpretative charge.
Hanging on the wall, on either side of Chaim van Luit’s installations, certain paintings by Hanna Dubey (France, 2001) can be seen up close, only if you cross Concrete Faith, Fragile Minds. Two small paintings appear as opposing visions of the same act of drinking (fresh water versus molten liquid), while a vast imaginary landscape seems to arise from biblical realms. One might see in it an illustration of the first verses of Genesis, like a “primordial landscape,” primitive, with a vision of light as the source of life—while also perceiving the final day, in a vision of encroaching shadow and imminent apocalypse. The title Premier Jour (“First Day”) perhaps helps preserve a sense of optimism. Alongside this landscape poised in strong duality, The Rings of Saturn by André Romão shows the head of a medieval Christ weeping pearls, inviting equally ambivalent interpretations. The beauty of the world is such that it can provoke opposing emotions: tears of joy or tears of sorrow. It is no coincidence that this work—and its title in particular—is mentioned last, to underline that all the works shown in this exhibition surrender themselves to the invisible bonds of attraction and repulsion that act upon every celestial body.
à chaque jour sa cargaison
d’horreurs, de crimes, de folies
cruauté humaine dite inhumaine
et c’est vrai qu’il vaut mieux se rappeler
tout ce que l’homme est capable de faire
par sa seule puissance limitée -
pourtant ce n’est pas seulement un rêve
que des clartés circulent entre nous
que jamais la haine, l’avidité,
ni notre bêtise n’ont su encore
détruire -
Lorand Gaspar