‘THE CONCERT’ – LATIFA ECHAKHCH

In collaboration with Alexandre Babel and Francesco Stocchi
April 23–November 27, 2022

Swiss Pavilion, Giardini

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In the beginning was the end: Latifa Echakhch’s cycle of life
The exhibition titled The Concert, is conceived by Latifa Echakhch, in collaboration with percussionist and composer Alexandre Babel and curator Francesco Stocchi.

Gloomy remnants of art fill the first space, where visitors set out on a counterclockwise journey through time. In each room, the atmosphere changes – time runs backwards, from broad daylight to the evening before. Ever more recognizably inspired by folk sculpture and customs, the sculptures, filling the whole space, are increasingly veiled by a spreading darkness.
These are scenes of impermanence, of catharsis, with which installation artist Latifa Echakhch captivates visitors of the Pavilion of Switzerland at this year’s Biennale Arte, scenes that bring to the fore the cycle of life in a multi-layered and complex way. Most of the material used for the exhibition is itself part of a transformation, recycled from previous biennales.

The exhibition plays with harmonies and dissonances, with the mixed feelings of expectation, fulfilment and disappearance. The sculptures are part of an orchestrated and enveloping experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allows viewers to experience a fuller perception of time and of their own body.

WORKS ON DISPLAY

When I began working on the pavilion, I started by anticipating the route a visitor might take. I wanted the entry to immediately impart the feeling of arriving at the end of something. This procedure turns us around because it goes against our expectations: we arrive at the back of the set as if we had already missed something. And this kind of let-down, the feeling of having missed out on something already in the past, plunges us into a state of light melancholy.

As we proceed, trying to understand what happened in this place, we slowly realize that we are already walking through the installation. Then, in the courtyard, we are able to identify rem- nants of sculptural works: we see they’ve been burned, and the farther we go the more we realize they are less and less burned. As we continue on our path, bigger and more complete sculptures emerge, giving us the impression of seeing them born from their own ashes in the big exhibition room; and as we continue on, they become bigger and bigger, they are immense. I wanted the sculptures to be almost as big as the space, as if this place was too small to accommodate the event planned for it. […]

– Latifa Echakhch

The longest, hardest part really was choosing the sculptures. I wanted something very accessible, and at one point it seemed that the representation of human figures was perhaps the closest and most interesting way of addressing the project. We had just come out of several months of lockdown during the pandemic. We had been looking at the bodies of others from afar, on video screens, all of it created a physical wanting. The lack of simple, daily, friendly interactions had made these all the more powerful: previously we shook hands, kissed cheeks, now we let ourselves go in great big hugs when we meet one another.

I wanted something that would reflect humanity and its very representations, like carnival giants, or those great wooden sculptures that are set atop bonfires. These are strange figures, figures of strangers; imbued with the sense that what I would really have liked to represent was the human being in general. And the construction process is collective, requiring many hands, as when similar events are prepared in villages. To burn human figures allows us to exorcise humanity and allow it to be reborn from the fecund ashes.

– Latifa Echakhch

I want people to exit the exhibition as they would a concert, with accelerated heart rates, and their heads full of fragments that re- constitute themselves in the form of variations.

– Latifa Echakhch

For more information, please contact
international@dvirgallery.com

All images are courtesy of the artist. Photo: Annik Wetter & Samuele Cherubini