Franco-Moroccan artist, Sara Ouhaddou is the second guest of the Fondation Thalie summer program in Arles; the artist presents for the first time a set of photographs which reveal the daily life of the artisans with whom she has collaborated for around ten years, the fruit of different projects carried out in Morocco, Tunisia and Japan.
The starting point of this ensemble is the relationship that the artist maintains with the members of her family, originally from Meknes, farmers and artisans.
Here and there, like punctuation, sculptural works intervene; they set the tone for the different photographic series, framed intentionally, like a graphic story. We also find stained glass, an object that the artist likes for its symbolism, carrying a vernacular language through its shape and colors… It is also the whole history of glass from around the Mediterranean that the artist explores, leading research between history and archaeology. “I wanted to listen again to the songs of childhood, of immigration, to translate them into musical scores, like the great masters of zellige (traditional Andalusian mosaic) who interpreted imaginary gardens through their know-how,” confides the ‘artist.
Sara Ouhaddou translates the Amazigh songs of her childhood through abstract alphabets that she composes in various mediums: ceramics, textiles, glass.
In her creative processes, the artist draws on the collective intelligence of rural areas, from the Atlas Mountains to the villages of the Rif, from the medinas of Fez to Marrakech. Her protocols make it possible to deconstruct the patterns, to innovate by imagining new tools around the works with the complicity of the artisans. The title of the exhibition “Sit down, have a glass of tea” [in Arabic: Gaalsi, T’charbi kass d’atay] is an invitation to enter the intimacy of these communities. Between social photography and sculptural works, a certain form of long-term poetry appears; a way of reading the world against the injunctions of globalization, thanks to an ecology of reuse that the artist is keen to include in a resolutely contemporary artistic approach.
Curators: Nathalie Guiot and Ludovic Delalande
Sara Ouhaddou : Assieds-toi, prends un verre de thé
Exhibition from June 30 to September 28, 2024
34 rue de l’Amphithéatre
13200 Arles, France
www.fondationthalie.org
Price: 5 Euros
