“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
Project Assistant
Laura Pandolfo laura@studiofatmi.com
Website design by
Untitled Agency
Courtesy: the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.
The Archeology installment forces the public to stand at ground level to see the bones of two skeletons that com- pose the piece. The bones are swept up against a wall by a three-meter broom that is carrying a black flag as a banner, representing a memento mori of our time. As life expectancy increases, the violence of conflicts has attained un- precedented ferocity in a few years. The absence of bodies, representing the preceding passage of death, leaves only bones that signify a lost battle. In drawing bitter attention to contemporary society, this work, evoking both the battleground and the excavation site, calls out through its brutality. As disenchanted vanity in a drifting world, the Archeology installation insists on the loss of meaning and our cultural, structural matrix. The work’s title thus carries the tragedy of human existence as well as regret and guilt in face of to- day’s society. Both fascinating and repulsive, the Archeology installation provokes reflection on the universal evil of a materialistic world. There is only one step between consumption and consummation, and in this piece, they are placed at the same level.
Born in Tangiers, Morocco, in 1970, mounir fatmi lives and works between Paris, Lille and Tangiers. mounir fatmi constructs visual spaces and linguistic games. His work deals with the desecration of religious objects, deconstruction and the end of dogmas and ideologies. He is particularly interested in the idea of the role of the artist in a society in crisis. His videos, installations, drawings, paintings and sculptures bring to light our doubts, fears and desires. They directly address the current events of our world, and speak to those whose lives are affected by specific events and reveals its structure. Mounir Fatmi’s work offers a look at the world from a different glance, refusing to be blinded by the conventions.
Courtesy: the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.