“I am like one who wore his brick to show the world how was his home.”
Bertolt Brecht
Often I was asked this question: how do I see myself as an artist? My answer has always been the same: I consider myself an immigrant worker. My job is to consider what it is to be an artist, when he feels different from in his own cultural context, even in his own role.
With this necessity, this permanent need to think of exile, the project of the Exile Pavilion was born, as a traveling project, offering a parallel cartography, a free geography of temporary exhibitions, with stops in different countries.
The project raises the question of the exile as a new space to be reinvented, to be rethought and finally to be invested. He wants to question both the global and specific links between various forms of displacement, whether the migrant worker’s situation, the expatriate, the refugee or the exile of war, natural disasters, economical problems, and political or racial persecutions.The Exile Pavilion wants to invest and cross all boundaries, revisiting the experiences of the exile and reactivate the traces in history. Where does the exile begin and where does it end?
Are we all equal against the displacement and exile? And from who are we exiles?The Exile Pavilion does not exist as an architectural building even if the proposal is made for architects to imagine. But it is the works of artists, visual artists, musicians, poets, writers, performers they are exiles or their work deals with the displacement, which build together this protean and nomadic pavilion. Its journey will make layovers at artistic structures, institutions, ephemeral places, in the form of exhibitions, publications and meetings. At each stop, the works and archival materials are redesigned according to the place and its history.
mounir fatmi,
June 30, 2016
Studio Fatmi Paris
Phone and Fax: +33 (0)9 52 78 14 92
mounir fatmi
fatmi.mounir@studiofatmi.com
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Laura Pandolfo laura@studiofatmi.com
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Untitled Agency
Courtesy: The artist
Lampedusa Checkpoint unfolds like a tragedy, with its dramaturgy and its sense of inevitability. The video opens with an image that has become symbolic, that of The Raft of the Medusa by Géricault, and seems to link the Mediterranean tragedy with the Senegal River, which can be seen through the portholes on the mezzanine. Then the artist appears, like a shipwreck victim, desperately trying to dry his soaking wet clothes. The water drips, trick- les; the split screen increases the impression of a shipwreck despite its sculptural scarcity. The voice of Asmahan, a famous Syrian female singer from the early 20th century, emerges, probably a popular tune... The entire life of this woman, who was born on a refugee boat and died drowning in the Nile, echoes exile and nostalgia. When Ali Assaf created this performance in 2004, Lampedusa, an island off the southern coast of Sicily, a gateway to Eu- rope for many refugees, wasn’t yet the tragic checkpoint it has become since, leaving over 2000 victims every year at the bottom of the sea surrounding it.
Born in 1950 in Al Basrah, Iraq, Ali Assaf lives and works in Rome. Studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Baghdad and in Rome, where he graduated in 1977. He has been living in Rome since then. Since 1970 his work was shown in many solo and group exhibitions in Italy, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Among others: XIII Biennale d’Arte Sacra Contemporanea, Museo Staurós, Isola del Gran Sasso; 11th International Cairo Biennale, Cairo, Egitto; Gulf Film Fes- tival, Dubai 2009; Roma, The Road to Contemporary Art, MACRO Testaccio, Rome 2011; his work is currently in the Iraq Pavilion in the 54th Venice Biennale, 2011.
Courtesy: The artist