‘Le voleur’ is part of a larger series which consists of clothes as well as accessories simply placed on the exhibition floor: a minimal gesture that has an unsettling psychological effect, and, although the piece contains no figures, the work suggests abstraction, and presence.

Latifa Echakhch born 1974, El Khnansa, Morocco. Lives and works between Martigny and Vevey, Switzerland.
Le Voleur is part of a larger series by Latifa Echakhch that features clothes and accessories placed simply on the exhibition floor. This minimalist gesture creates a subtle yet unsettling psychological effect. Although the work contains no figures, it evokes both abstraction and presence, suggesting the memory of someone who is missing or has just left. The objects, void of their usual function, appear as traces of an absence, imbuing the space with a haunting sense of unfulfilled potential.
The piece was created as a tribute to the writer Georges Perec, who described himself as a "user of space"—someone who both observed and interacted with the world around him in a profound way. Perec’s connection to the piece is further symbolized by the asteroid "2817 Perec," which was discovered in 1982, the same year as his death. In Le Voleur, Echakhch transforms Perec’s literary exploration of space into a visual language, considering the spaces left behind and the quiet, fleeting moments that define our experience of reality.