Beyond displacements, living with wounds, through the art of repair
Through art, connection, protection
Dear readers,
Extremely busy week here in Paris…
We are in the midst of important political turmoil, and I cover international issues, from West Africa to America.
It’s not an easy position, to constantly be challenged in your environment when you have to discuss complicated questions for the rest of the world.
I hope your situation is easier or warmer, happier.
Here are a few ideas and pieces I really care to share these days…
PODCAST - On finding refuge: With French Algerian artist Kader Attia, and UN workers
These past two weeks, as France heads to the polls, I’ve been talking about migration again… Different forms of displacement, from the ones of refugees forced into exile by wars to the situations of returnees, and to migrations that lead to more meaning.
In the new episode of my podcast, we head to the museum of modern art of Montpellier, the MO.CO, in the south of France, to meet with the French Algerian artist Kader Attia, at his new exhibition, 'Descent into Paradise'.
He has been inspired all his life by his own story of migrations, his travels, and his main theme: how to repair past traumas through art and poetry…
PODCAST - SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICA
African displacements and the search for refuge, in life and art
https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/spotlight-africa/
» Spotlight on Africa is a podcast from Radio France Internationale
From my conversation with Kader Attia
The inspirational journey of an artist who used his constant migrations between France, Algeria, Africa and Asia to find inspiration in his creations: Kader Attia.
"Descent into Paradise" is Attia's first exhibition in over five years in his native France. He describes it as "a journey through my life story, the starting point of a dialogue, and a reflection on our times, a challenging path".
The title is a deconstruction of Dante’s Divine Comedy, from purgatory to hell, underneath which is hidden the ambivalent beauty of paradise, he adds.
Curated by Numa Hambursin, the show draws inspiration from the spatial organisation of the MoCo museum of modern art in Montpellier.
Visitors go from the top floor down to the basement as a metaphor for a voyage from the sky to the earth and its depths.
It's a reflection on repair, reparations and transcendence that "questions the notion of verticality as a vital and spiritual movement", according to the curator.
Algerian inspirations
"Algeria is definitely very important in my work, especially the traces of my family," Attia told me on the opening day of the exhibition, which is being shown in conjunction with "Being Mediterranean", a show of contemporary art from around the Mediterranean.
"My grandmother and my father fought against colonialism. But I also really care about the idea that we can have several identities."
Keen to share his identities with the world, Attia says his art is a way to honour the legacy of our ancestors.
"I grew up in a family in poverty in the east of Algeria, in the Aurès mountains – a landscape that has been significant in my life."
A multimedia artist, he uses drawing, photography, video, sculpture and installations.
The first works on display are a series of photographs of geometrical rocks from the Bab El Oued area of Algiers, where the artist would visit family.
In some photographs, young men look out towards the sea and towards Europe – except one, who sits reading a newspaper. He represents the one who agreed to stay and care for his country instead of dreaming of immigration.
Attia explores Algeria through food with an installation that uses ingredients such as bread from where he grew up, and melted sugar cubes.
"They go with Algerian plates that have been broken – plates we used to prepare the bread, with special patterns in them, created with the peaks of forks," he explains.
Attia says this is a way of addressing his main theme, the desire for repair from past wounds, which irrigate the fractures of our present.
"I juxtapose eras and places in a back-and-forth movement," he explains. "I feel that spirituality enables us to escape the grip of history.
"Like the rain that ravages and transforms in two of the final pieces, it creates an ascension in a downward flow. This is how I see the 'Descent into Paradise'."
Travels back and forth
Born in 1970 in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, Attia grew up in his parents' native Algeria, and lived between the two countries for most of his youth.
He studied art in Paris at the prestigious École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs before travelling extensively in Algeria, Congo, Latin America and Asia, which informed his art deeply.
"We, as artists, can change by absorbing different cultures, dynamics, conversations," he says.
Attia is drawn to emotional responses to historical events, particularly those that involve exile and uprootedness, and he has a deep interest in the "repair" of trauma – especially colonial wounds.
The idea of repair is explicit in his sculptures referring the gueules cassées (broken faces) – soldiers who were disfigured during WWI.
Between poetry and politics
Attia, who was awarded the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2016, has forged a body of work that travels between the political and the poetic.
"The most important is to go back and forth between these two," he told me.
"I'm addressing political questions sometimes, that is very clear. And I'm addressing them through the lens of a metaphysical and philosophical purpose."
Attia points to "Intifada: the Endless Rhizomes of Revolution", a 2016 installation of tree-like sculptures made of metal rebar, that form Ys to support slingshots, which were used to by Palestinians against Israelis during the First Intifada in 1987
By intertwining the political with the poetic, Attia says he can "elaborate more subtle meanings, to echo the complexity of the society rather than very limited views and cliche".
"Descent into Paradise" is at Montpellier’s museum of modern art, Moco, through 22 September 2024.
And… an extract from our video-recorded interview:
PODCAST - On refugees
My other guests and I are discussing how to support refugees and displaced people, as the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, reports that more than 120 million are currently forcibly displaced, by war, violence and persecution.
This is an unprecedented high number, described on World Refugee Day (20 June) by the organisation as a "terrible indictment on the state of the world".
We see with Aaron Adkins from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) how to address the needs of the South Sudanese refugees fleeing the war in Sudan.
And with Maribeth Black from the UN's World Food Programme in Mauritania (WFP), we hear how, in a different conflict situation, the government has managed to integrate refugees into the country successfully, an example for many in Africa and beyond.
African displacements and the search for refuge, in life and art
» Spotlight on Africa is a podcast from Radio France Internationale:
https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/spotlight-africa/
Conflicts in Africa occupy my time daily, for my work. But the other horrific wars are also always on my mind.
This is why I wanted to write more about Gaza, Palestine and their neighbours…
Please, have a read.
Interview with the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, in France earlier this week
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
France's tense political climate mirrors Israel's, says scholar Ilan Pappé
Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has seen his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine reissued in France after a French publisher pulled it from shelves. He tells RFI that it fits with a broader political climate that limits freedom of expression, both across Europe and in Israel.
Issued on: 28/06/2024
Read the whole article here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/international/20240628-france-s-tense-political-climate-mirrors-israel-s-says-scholar-ilan-papp%C3%A9
Ilan Pappé was in France to talk about his book on ethnic cleansing in Palestine by Israeli governments, and participated in a public discussion in Pantin (93) on Sunday 23 June 2024 - extract:
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Thanks for opening this letter, as always.
Wish us luck for the French elections…
I wish you all the best in these troubled times, and keep fighting,
melissa
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Melissa Chemam
Journalist, Audio Producer & Writer
@ RFI English, New Arab, ART UK, Byline Times...
My blog: https://melissa-on-the-road.blogspot.com/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXE4ofFjz0lsRzemjdmFf7w