Galerie Claude Lemand

DISLOCATIONS. Exhibition of 15 artists at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

Curators : Marie-Laure Bernadac and Daria de Beauvais.
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Exhibition from February 15 to June 30, 2024.
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The "Dislocations" exhi­bi­tion brings together fif­teen artists of dif­ferent gen­er­a­tions and ori­gins (Afghanistan, France, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Myanmar, Palestine, Syria, Ukraine), whose work is marked or informed by the expe­ri­ence of exile, of being torn between here and else­where, between past and pre­sent : Majd Abdel Hamid, Rada Akbar, Bissane Al Charif, Ali Arkady, Cathryn Boch, Tirdad Hashemi, Fati Khademi, Sara Kontar, Nge Lay, Randa Maddah, May Murad, Armineh Negahdari, Hadi Rahnaward, Maha Yammine, Misha Zavalniy.

Their prac­tices com­bine ances­tral know-how and con­tem­po­rary tech­nolo­gies, humble ges­tures and poor mate­rials. The aim is to pay homage to the vital neces­sity and inten­sity of artistic cre­ation through frag­mented nar­ra­tives crossing dis­place­ment, impris­on­ment, war, but also resilience and repa­ra­tion. At a time when inter­na­tional geopo­lit­ical events are a palimpsest of times and spaces in crisis, artists can be seen as look­outs, atten­tive to the jolts of the world and the move­ments of society that are so many tel­luric waves. To be a watchman is to bear wit­ness to our times, to deploy the power of our imag­i­na­tion by exploring the social and polit­ical real­i­ties of yes­terday, today and tomorrow.
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Bisane AL CHARIF (Paris, 1977 - Palestine-Syria-France)

Bissane Al-Charif studied archi­tec­ture at Damascus University and set design at the Ecole nationale supérieure d’archi­tec­ture in Nantes, before embarking on a career as a set designer for film, the­atre and opera. After leaving Syria in 2013, she has been devel­oping a more per­sonal body of work (draw­ings, instal­la­tions and videos), in line with the par­tic­ular nature of her journey, marked by rup­tures and restarts, and which focuses on the ques­tion of indi­vidual and col­lec­tive memory. Her research is rooted in reality, based on per­sonal accounts and doc­u­men­tary mate­rial, while at the same time ques­tioning artistic forms and prac­tices them­selves.

The artist has pro­duced a series of thirty self-por­traits on mechan­ical piano paper, enti­tled Pianola. These draw­ings are like a diary or an emo­tional car­tog­raphy. Hearing, sight and speech are reg­u­larly obstructed – notably by fruit and veg­e­ta­tion – as if wit­nessing were of the utmost dif­fi­culty. Elsewhere, the eyes are wide open, as if it were on the con­trary of the highest impor­tance not to miss any­thing of the world’s upheavals. Musical terms such as « solo » and « adagio, ma non troppo » (slow, but not too slow) are stamped sev­eral times, evoking both the com­po­si­tions and the artist’s state of mind. Green, the symbol of hope, is the pre­dom­i­nant colour of this ensemble.