“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.
Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.
Ethel Waters
Press
Another 7 days to discover Mounir Fatmi's Pavilion of Exile in Tangier, Tanger Experience, August 8th, 2017.
Stella, Berger, From exile I made glasses to see, Dyptik, n°35, Oct-Nov 2016, pp. 36-38.
Contact
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
This website was designed by Untitled Duo
Ndari Lo
MARCHEUR
Welded metal
2015
Courtesy: rights-holders of the artist
In the exhibition space, the visitors are likely to run into the slender silhouettes of Ndari Lo’s two walkers. The walking man is of course a figure that evokes departure, traveling, nomadism and ex- ile. He reveals both the deeply mobile nature of man and his capacity to literally and figuratively “move forward”. These walkers also possess the fol- lowing meaning for the artist: a determined walk towards the future, a “long walk towards change”, he said. The walkers are therefore doubly symbolic: of this walk, sometimes forced by events or elements but that naturally pushes man towards discovering new places, and of man’s fierce commitment to progress. The Exile Pavilion represented a unique occasion to honour this internationally renowned Senegalese artist who recently passed away.
About the artist
Ndary Lo (Dakar, 1961 – Lyon, 2017) was an internationally renowned Senegalese sculptor, also considered one of the most active African artists in the creation of installations. He is known to most for the men who march: very high iron silhouettes, which rush towards the sky. And man, in fact, was the center of his research, as well as AIDS, slavery and the tragic fate of migrants. This volume, directed by Jacques Rouayroux and Sylvain Sankalé, is presented as a monograph of the artist who places his metal works in dialogue with his most ephemeral creations often contained in dusty notebooks, private correspondences, unpublished documents. The book responds to the last wishes of Ndary Lo who, shortly before his death, commissioned Jacques Rouayroux to bring to light all the richness of his work for too long inevitably hidden in his atelier. Only through this process would it be possible for Ndary Lo to grasp the depth of his creation and the thought from which the creative moment originated. Alongside the artist’s works, contributions from art and work specialists of the Senegalese sculptor take place, in this way the reader has the opportunity to resonate with the intimate thought of Ndary Lo, deepen his intentions and follow his meanders of his creative process.