RE
_ Responding to the development of the pandemic in Tunis:
Start of the Discusssion with Bettina and Aymen
_ organizing the co-working sessions on Friday

FRI 9 July, 2.00 pm to 6.00 pm

RE
_ Coworking: Conceptual Text
with Daniela and the Conceptual Team
_ Coworking: Artists’ Profile on the Website
with Sara Mari and the Webteam
_ Coworking: Public Program Online / Onsite
with Alexia and the Public Program Team
_ Coworking: Art Mediation
with Salma and the Art Mediation Team
_ Coworking: Communication
with Aymen and all who want to support communication
_ Coworking: Coordination / Hospitality / Well-Being
with Samira and all who want to support coordination

SAT 10 July, 10.00 am to 12.00 am

TASAWORAT
_ Responding to the development of the pandemic in Tunis:
Next Steps with Bettina and Aymen

RE
_ Conceptual Text: Finalizing
_ Choice of Artists: Filling the gaps
_ Web: Artists’ Profiles
_ Debate / Public Program: Trends

FRI 25 June, 2.00 pm to 6.00 pm

RE
_ Funding Portfolio: Finalizing
_ Funding: Supporting Ongoing Applications
_ Funding: Future Funding Applications
_ Travel

SAT 26 June, 10.00 am to 12.00 am

TASAWORAT

_ Open Questions
_ Art Mediation: Supporting the Open Call and the Workshop Series
_ T[3]: Supporting the Interviews

2.00 pm Tunis Time
_ TASAWAR [3] Open Call
_ TASAWORAT Update
_ RE: Coordination/Hospitality
_ RE: Funding
_ RE: Choice of Artists/Open List
_ RE: Sites
_ RE: Production
_ RE: Talks/Roundtables
_ RE: Art Mediation
_ RE: Web Coworking
_ T[2] Publication: Workload? Alternatives?

4.00 pm
MBL

6.00 pm
End

FRI 11 June 2021

2.00 pm Tunis Time
MBL

6.00 pm
End

10.00 am ALWAYS TUNIS TIME
Conceptual Approach
Contexts
_ Bettina

12.00 pm
Organization
_ Samira

1.00 pm | Online
Conversations on Curating: ruangrupa
https://fb.me
Conversations on Curating explores how curating is continuously redefined and repositioned in ways that go far beyond exhibition-making.

ruangrupa is a Jakarta-based collective established in 2000. It is a non-profit organization that strives to support the idea of art within urban and cultural context by involving artists and other disciplines such as social sciences, politics, technology, media, etc, to give critical observation and views towards Indonesian urban contemporary issues. ruangrupa also produce collaborative works in the form of art projects such as exhibition, festival, art lab, workshop, research, as well as book, magazine and online-journal publication. As an artists’ collective, ruangrupa has been involved in many collaborative and exchange projects, including participating in big exhibitions such as Gwangju Biennale (2002 & 2018), Istanbul Biennial (2005), Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Brisbane, 2012), Singapore Biennale (2011), São Paulo Biennial (2014), Aichi Triennale (Nagoya, 2016) and Cosmopolis at Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2017). In 2016, ruangrupa curated TRANSaction: Sonsbeek 2016 in Arnhem, NL. They will curate Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany in 2022.

2.00 pm
Break

3.00 pm | Online
Diversity Check
_ Irene

4.00 pm | Online
Conceptual approach to sites
_ Building tandems for site-visit
_ Bettina

6.00 pm
End

FRI 28 May 2021

10.00 am – 1.00 pm | onsite/online
Site-scouting in Sidi Bou Said
_ Bettina & Aymen

1.00 pm
Break

2.00 pm | Online
Funding
_ Alexia, Bettina

4.00 pm | Online
Production
_ Aymen, Elham, Daniela

SAT 29 May 2021

10.00 am | Online
Website
_ Sara-Mari, Leah

1.00 pm
Break

2.00 pm | Online
Art Mediation
_ Kenza, Salma, Syrine

4.00 pm
Summary / Organization
_ Bettina

1 / CONCEPTUAL GUIDELINES & TITLE

Over the last weeks we discussed the theme and the title of the exhibition: We will focus on the ‘The Art of Archiving’ and the title of the exhibition will be ‘RE’ referencing the suffix that indicates ‘to return to the origins’ or to ‘redo’ something. Please try write down your associations and bring them to the session so that we can use them for the ‘curatorial rationale’.

_ Tasks

Synchronize in the curatorial collective what could can / should be addressed in the research and development of the project.

Write a text for the website and the funding info.

Come-up with artist’s proposals and present them to the curatorial collective. If you have artist’s in mind that might be interesting to be included and that might be ok to work in the framework we can provide, please prepare a smal presentation to introduce them to us. If you have no one on your list yet, that is fine, too.

Start to work on the artist’s profiles on the website.

2 / SITES

The exhibtion project will take place in Sidi Bou Said. The qualities and choice of sites is part of the conceptual work.

_ Tasks

Name and frame the qualities of the sites.

Discover Sidi Bou Said and find sites. We will try to provide you all with local tandems to be able to (video-)walk in Sidi Bou Said.

Provide info text and images of the sites for the artists, the website and the funding info.

3 / TIMELINE

The exhibition project will take place within the timeframe from 25 August to 5 September 2021.

_ Tasks

Discuss the pro’s /con’s for the exact days.

4 / WEBSITE / ONLINE EXHIBITION

Due to the ongoing Covid-19-restrcitions we will work on the exhibition onsite and online. We will introduce you to the state-of-preparations.

SOCIAL MEDIA

We will discuss jointly a strategy for a good social media campaign. Please think of some ideas.

ONSITE COMMUNICATION

We will discuss what needs to be done to generate visibility for the exhibtion project in Sidi Bou Said, Tunis, and the region.

FUNDING

We still need funding and we will spend some time to prepare jointly a funding info.

5 / ART MEDIATION

We will share the state-of-preparation for the art mediation program. We will try to find a local team to support us and we have to dicsuss who will train them and who will share their tasks.

6 / CONTEXTS

We will present to you the projects by TASAWAR [1] COLLECTIVE ‘Matter of Time’ and INTERFERENCE ‘Not Listed’ that will take place in the same timeframe. The joint brand will be ‘1³ – Contemporary Art Festival Sidi Bou Said’.

Increasingly, since the 1990s we have witnessed the uptake of the notion of ‘the curatorial’ across the arts. This recent development brings me to reflect on what are the differences between curating and the curatorial? And building on this, what possibilities does the curatorial present to us? 

Today, curating is an integral activity across the arts and cultural sectors. Curating can be understood as a series of professional practices related to exhibition-making, usually taking place in institutional settings such as museums and galleries as well as biennials. Curating signifies a number of activities that culminate in putting on an exhibition; this includes the selection, organisation and presentation of a series of artworks for display. On the other hand, ‘the curatorial’ does not lend itself to being defined with such an ease.  What I set out to do here is not define it and anchor it in meaning, but rather curiously trace its contours, to secure a glimpse of the possibilities that such an alternative mode of enquiry presents. 

The curatorial is not restricted to the process of exhibition-making, as its methodologies are ever-evolving and its outputs multifarious. The nature of its projects are longer-term, discursive, educational and collaborative. Stemming from this understanding, the curatorial seeks to engender new understandings by straying away from established methodologies and practices, as it does not seek to reproduce dominant narratives, but rather sets out to disrupt them. In doing so, the curatorial sets out to question the authorial and consolidated practices associated with curating. Rather than perceive knowledge as static, the curatorial lingers around haunting absences, and sets out to establish new connections between discourses, allowing new constellations to take shape. The curatorial avoids following the same well-trodden paths, and instead sets out to carve out new paths of its own, arriving at new and unfamiliar ground. As soon as a sense of familiarity begins to creep in, the process of discovery begins all over again. It is in a state of constant flux. I draw on Irit Rogoff’s words, who argues that ” ‘the curatorial’ is thought and critical thought at that, that does not rush to embody itself , does not rush to concretise itself, but allows us to stay with the questions until they point us in some direction we might have not been able to predict”¹. 

This development can be interpreted as a growing desire to embark on alternative process- knowledge and research-based endeavours that break loose from rigid practices and expected forms linked to current forms of exhibition-making. The curatorial unleashes new possibilities by its ability to spill over into the political and social realms, enabling new sensibilities and understandings to emerge, allowing the world to appear other.

This also indicates an important change: the changing role of the curator. The curatorial brings the curator into a role that is creative and innovative, where the curator creates artistic and cultural value. In light of this change, it has sparked a growing discussion that seeks to distinguish the role of the artist and that of the curator. This has also given rise to various criticisms over the years. One critique is that it gives priority to the curator, placing them in a position of greater influence and authority than the artist as the creator of art. 

In my opinion such criticisms reflect the curatorial’s ability to transcend pre-existing practices, methodologies and power structures, as it sets out to find novel ways of thinking, working and collaborating. Although this may pose a threat to some, I am hopeful of the more radical possibilities that it can present. By way of conclusion, I echo Eszter Szakács who posits that the curatorial presents a way forward, a direction to follow, and reminds us that the emphasis should be placed on the relation between curating and the curatorial, rather than on the difference between them².

1.  Irit Rogoff (2006) ‘Smuggling’ – An Embodied Criticality. On https://xenopraxis.net/readings/rogoff_smuggling.pdf [Accessed on 10 April 2021].
2. Eszter Szakács (n.d.). The Curatorial. On: http://tranzit.org/curatorialdictionary/index.php/dictionary/curatorial/ [Accessed on 10 April 2021].

منذ التسعينيات شهدنا تطوراً جديداً في مجال الفنون وهو استخدام كلمة القيمية بشكل متزايد. هذا يدفعني لأن أتساءل ما هو الفرق بين التقييم والقيمية؟ وما هي الاحتمالات الجديدة التي تطرحها القيمية كممارسة مستجدة.

 أصبح التقييم نشاطاً أساسيا ومحوري في مجال الفنون والثقافة. التقييم هو سلسلة من الممارسات المهنية التي تتعلق بإعداد المعارض وأنماط العرض الأخرى التي تحدث عادة في بيئة مؤسسية مثل متحف أو معرض أو بينالي (Biennial).  يتمحور التقييم حول  الأفعال المختلفة التي تنتج خلال تقديم معرض لعرض الأعمال الفنية. هذا يشمل عملية اختيار الأعمال الفنية وتنظيمها وتقديمها للعرض. لكن القيمية في مجال الفن أصعب للتحديد بهذه الدقة.  ما اسعى إليه عبر هاته المقالة، ليس فرض تعريف أو ترسيخ لمعنى القيمية وإنما هو تتبع لمعالمها نابع من فضول يرجو طرح وإستكشاف احتمالاتها.

 القيمية لا ترتبط فقط بعرض الأعمال الفنية إنما تعنى أيضا بمنهجيتها وأشكالها المتنوعة ودائمة التطور ومنتجاتها العديدة.  تُعتبر القيمية ممارسة تتمحور حول مشاريع طويلة المدى ، فهي تعليمية ومحفزة على النقاش وتشمل التعاون مع العديد من الأشخاص كفاعلين وممثلين.لا تُعنى القيمية بالمنتجات الملموسة بالضرورة. من هذا المنظور, القيمية تقدم إمكانات مختلفة لخلق مفاهيم جديدة  فهي تبتعد عن التصنيفات و المبادئ والممارسات المفروضة والمعتادة، لأنها لا تركز فقط على استنساخ موضوعات مسيطِرة وهياكل سلطوية، بل تطمح لطرح سرديات جديدة. فبدلاً من اعتبار المعرفة شيئاً ثابتاً، تسعى القيمية إلى تحديد فجوات معرفية، وإعادة رسم الروابط بين المجالات غير المرتبطة لخلق مجموعة جديدة من العلاقات والروابط مولدةً بذلك معارف جديدة جديدة من المعرفة. تتجنب القيمية المسارات المُكتشَفة مسبقاً وتبذل جهداً لتحديد طرق جديدة للوصول إلى ما هو غير مألوف. وعندما نألف هذه الطرق، تُعيد القيمية اكتشافها مجددًا، خالقة مسارات جديدة. فبالتالي تفكك القيمية المسلّمات وتوفر مساحة من الحرية لنقد المؤسسات والممارسات المعتادة في التقييم. أستعين هنا  باقتباس ايريت روجوف:(“القيمية” هي ​​التفكير والتفكير النقدي الذي لا يتسرع في تجسيد نفسه، ولا يتسرع في تمكين نفسه. إنما يسمح لنا بالبقاء مع الأسئلة حتى توجهنا في اتجاه ما لم نكن قادرين على التنبؤ به مسبقاً)¹.

يعتبر ظهور هذا التطور من التقييم إلى القيمية بمثابة استجابة للقيود المرتبطة بالممارسات الحالية في مجال صناعة المعارض. فتطرح القيمية أنماطاً بديلة للعمل وإنتاج المعرفة ومنهجيات البحث.  أحد إمكانيات هذا التطور هو توسيع نطاق الحوار من الدوائر الفنية والثقافية ليشمل أيضاً الدوائر الاجتماعية والسياسية. كلُّ هذا لديه القدرة على أن يتيح الفرصة لظهور مفاهيم جديدة وإنشاء مدارك بديلة للتعامل مع جوانب عالمنا المختلفة، لتظهر احتمالات جديدة غير مكتشفة مسبقاً.

من التغيرات الهامة الناتجة عن تطور القيمية هي تحول دور القيّم/ة إلى دور إبداعي وابتكاري ت/يخلق من خلاله قيمة فنية وثقافية. هذا التغير قد أثار الجدل حول الفرق بين دور الفنان/ة ودور القيّم/ة في هذا السياق الجديد. وأدى هذا التغير أيضًا إلى انتقادات مختلفة إحداها أن القيمية تولي شخصية القيّم/ة الفني مساحة تأثير وسلطة أكبر من مساحة الفنان حيث منشأ الفن.

أرى أن انتقاداتٍ كهذه ما هي إلا مؤشر وانعكاس عن قدرة القيمية على تجاوز الممارسات والمنهجيات وهياكل السلطة الموجودة مسبقاً. فتنطلق القيمية لإيجاد طرق جديدة للتفكير والعمل والتعاون. وبالرغم من أن القيمية قد تشكل تهديداً للبعض، إلا أنني آملُ إنها ستوسع مداركنا وتغنينا باحتمالات أكثر احتمالات راديكالية. في الختام، أردد كلام إسزتر سكزس عندما تقول أن القيمية تقدم اتجاهًا و طريقًا للتقدم، وتذكرنا بأن التركيز يجب أن يكون على العلاقة ما بين القيمية  والتقييم وليس على الاختلافات بينهما².

1. Irit Rogoff (2006) ‘Smuggling’ – An Embodied Criticality. On https://xenopraxis.net/readings/rogoff_smuggling.pdf [Accessed on 10 April 2021].

2. Eszter Szakács (n.d.). The Curatorial. On: http://tranzit.org/curatorialdictionary/index.php/dictionary/curatorial/ [Accessed on 10 April 2021].

باش نبدى من الكلمة اللولى
تجريبي جاية مالتّجراب و التجربة, كلمتين عندهم علاقة ببعضهم اما موش بالضرورة قراب في المعنى (ممكن يعنيو حاجتين بعاد على بعضهم)

التجراب يعني المحاولة . تحاول ولا تجرب برشا مرات حتى لين تنجح.(الكهربة ماحبتش تخدم. هاني نجرب فماشي ما تخطف) هوني التجراب نعرفو النتيجة متاعو. التكرار هو اهم عملية هوني. والي ممكن نترجمو ها بالاڨليزية to try again and again

نجمو نقولو زادا نجرب بمعنى انو نستعمل( نجرب) في برشا حاجات ولّا طرق مختلفة. هنا فما محاولة مع تغيير “حاجات” معينة.
نجرب = نعمل في تجارب نحاول نستعمل فيها “حاجات مختلفة”.
“الحاجات” هوني نجمو نحددوها حسب السياق الي احنا فيه و هو الفن. تنجم تكون الادات و المادة والوسيط وحتى الطريقة و المنهج… اي حاجة تدخل في عمل الفنان.
…في مسألة معينة يقلك هاني مازلت نجرب مانعرفش وين باش نوصل. وهنا النتيجة موش معروفة. شخص قاعد يعمل في تجارب صغار وهذا الي نعنيو به c’est encore expérimental, c’est en cour d’expérimentation
هاني نجرب و نشوف شنوة تعطي.
هاني نجرب في شنوة يساعدني.
يقلك it’s not final
في طور التجريب… مازال ما كملت… معناها
مرة اخرى فما تكرار في العملية
في العبارات هاذي فما فعل التفركيس… حتّى لوكان انها الحكاية باش تجي بالزهر اما النية موجودة باطنيا
هوني نجم نقول انو فعل نفركس/ التفركيس مهم في السياق متاعنا

في العربية ما فماش تفسيرات للفن التجريبي اما أقرب حاجة موجودة هي تفسير المسرح التجريبي
المسرح التجريبي: الْمَسْرَحُ الَّذِي يُقَدِّمُ نَمَاذِجَ مَسْرِحَيَّةً تَعْتَمِدُ اسْتِخْدَامَ أَشْكَالٍ وَأَسَالِيبَ جَدِيدَةٍ تَمْثيِلاً وَإِخْرَاجاً.
…
…
الجديد هوني مهم برشا خاطر لوكان فعل التجراب ولّا التجريب يعني بطريقة او أخرى التفركيس على حاجات جديدة في الوجود يعني انو الفنان كيما العالم يحاول يكتشف ولا يخترع حاجات ما نعرفوهاش في الدنيا هاذي)
هذا ينجم يكون بطرق مختلفة عن العالم اما اكيد هوني نجمو نحكيو على عملية الخلق و الابداع على خاطر على عكس المتعارف عليه عامة انو الفن هو وحي و موهبة اكاهو الّا انو هوني نراو الي هي عملية تجراب بحث و تفركيس في بلايص مضلمة حتا الفنان في حد ذاتو ما يعرفهاش.

في المعنى الي توحي بيه – المعنى المنجر عل الاستعمال

by Aymen Gharbi

Feedback recommendation statements
Preparing the publication studio

Preparing the exhibition project
_ Cross-check on the ON | OFF Debriefing Book

THURSDAY

10.00 am Tunis Time
Introduction

11.30 am
Research and writing

2.30 pm
Break

3.00 pm to 6.00 pm
Peer-reviewing and correction
Collective feedback session

FRIDAY

10.00 am
Status check and correction

11.30 am
English translation and tandem proofing

2.30 pm
Break

3.00 pm to 6.00 pm | G-DRIVE | Hosted by Bettina Pelz
ON | OFF Archiving
Finalizing the recommendation statements
Preparing the publication studio
Preparing the exhibition project

SATURDAY

10.00 am
Checking all text + Ramadan planning

11.30 am
Website upload + social media adaptation

2.30 pm
Break

3.00 pm to 6.00 om
Summary, review, feedback

EXHIBITIONS Selection

2021 | Paris.fr, Foundation Fiminco
2021 | Paris.fr, Cité Internatuional des Art

2020 | Bruxelles.be, Espace d’art contemporain
2020 | Amman.jr, MMAG Foundation
2020 | Tunis.tn, Selma Feriani Gallery

2019 | Abu Dhabi.uae, Warehouse 421
2019 | Rabat.tn, Le Cube
2019 | Tunis.tn, B7L9
MORE

STUDIES

Paris.fr, University of the Arts La Sorbonne, PhD
Tunis.tn, Art Academy, MA

BIO

Born in Tunis-Carthage.

[/one_half][one_half_last padding=”6px 6px 6px 6px”]
Andréan Bégin: L’impossible syndrome de Stendhal:
Portrait de Farah Khelil (in French). 10 February 2021.
Translation: deepl.com & Bettina Pelz

Farah Khelil is an artist. Farah Khelil is a researcher. Farah Khelil is not an archivist. Farah Khelil is a woman. Farah Khelil used to be a painter, but has emancipated herself from painting. Farah Khelil is a translator of emotion. Farah Khelil is Tunisian. Farah Khelil is not a historian. Farah Khelil is a little punk. Farah Khelil is not at the service of memory. Farah Khelil is a philosopher who formulates ideas and expresses them with artistic forms rather than with words. Farah Khelil is an ontologist, and things are things for themselves.

Farah Khelil’s work is a protean materialization of the artist’s intuitions. The mediums used – photography, installation, drawing, sound composition, writing – are as varied as the sources the artist uses: historical or personal archives, found objects, documentary photographs. This great diversity which merges under her hands allows her to play with several levels of reading and perception. Each work is a universe in itself, where micro and macro stories meet through artistic gesture.

In Farah Khelil’s personal story, everything begins when she arrives in Paris. Before that, she studied Fine Arts in Tunis, where she learned to master the traditional artistic techniques that at the time were the norm in Tunisia. Her artistic practice is then centered around painting, a hyperrealist painting. Her artistic knowledge is impregnated with the study of Western art history.

In Paris, she arrives at museums, and in front of the works she realizes that she already knows them, that she has already been moved, that she has already vibrated when reading the explanations of these works. Some visitors can suffer psychological decompensation in front of masterpieces, it is the syndrome of Stendhal, but Farah Khelil is immune. She may look, but she is physically present but emotionally elsewhere. She is in the books of art history that she studied at length, she travels from reproductions to reproductions of these masterpieces. This silence allows the question of the encounter with the work to emerge. At what point does one encounter an artwork? When do we see it for the first time? Do we really see it and only by facing it? This questioning of the gaze and perception is reminiscent of Denis Diderot’s Lettre ‘Sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient’. In front of a painting, one can not understand it, not be touched by it, even if one has already studied it. Even a blind person who would find the sight will need time to make the synthesis between what he could live before and what his eye discovers now.

But let’s get back to Farah. We are in 2007 and this year marks the death of painting in Farah Khelil’s practice. This death is fertile, since it is actually a birth, the founding act of everything she creates since, an awakening that will allow her to define her intellectual and artistic posture. Farah Khelil becomes aware of the influence of the media culture of Western art in Tunisia. Media in the sense that Western art is examined in all its forms, and that she has access to it through visual or textual analyses. Between her and the works, there is always another medium. This imposed distance leads Farah to reflect on the notion of impact, of the impact that artworks have on us. Farah’s work is all about the question of reception, and the different postures that make it possible: a point of view or a point of listening. A bit like Joseph Kosuth who gathers the chair, its image, and its definition, Farah Khelil’s practice integrates into the work its own media. The content of Farah Khelil’s work is that of a constant exploration of the device of exposure, transmission, and translation. The content is at the service of the container, it is a pretext for the artist, to allow her to bring to life in her works her desire to share, to exchange.

Here intervenes the question of the Tunisian identity, and it is in a logic of decolonization that it questions its heritage, in particular artistic and cultural very largely marked by the Western domination. This duality, Farah Khelil also knows how to put it at the service of its creative purpose. This is the case with the series ‘Viewpoint’, ‘Listening Point’ (Clichés II), initiated in 2012, in which Farah Khelil uses souvenirs of tourism in Tunisia. Found in France, she uses postcards that to her are not archives, but a building material for the artist. She cuts out shapes that appear on the image side of the postcard. Always presented on the text side, playing on what is visible and what is legible, the postcards give to see initially figurative voids, but which become abstract once the card is turned over.

Point of view, point of listening (Clichés II), 2013-2019

This technique of the lack, the hollow, is found in other pieces by Farah. For example, the series ‘Surface Effect’ (2018) is a set of laser-drawn educational art history slides. The laser-drawn shapes are figures taken from an encyclopedia. The ‘Excavations Series’ (2019) is a set of laser-drilled slides of archaeological sites in Roman Tunisia, featuring text correspondences of visitors to Tunisia taken from postcards. These series are also part of the relationship between Western and Tunisian culture.

Excavations, 2019

In the artist’s only painting series, ‘Point of View, Point of Hearing (shots 1)’ (2012), small canvases of Tunisian landscapes intended to be sold to tourists are covered by the artist with white paint. She still leaves the original landscape peeking out in places through small dots. We find here this dimension of seeing through, of a hole which opens our field of vision. Exposed all together, they form a constellation of the visible and the invisible.

Point of view, point of listening (Clichés I), 2013

For the exhibition at the Fiminco Foundation, Farah Khelil has chosen to create new pieces from the series ‘Bedside Notes’ and ‘Point de vue’, ‘Point d’écoute’ (Nuit Blanche), in an installation adapted to the exhibition’s purpose, and which continues the artist’s artistic research. The ‘Bedside Notes’ series began in 2017, during a residency in Gafsa, Tunisia. This region in southern Tunisia is a meeting between her personal family history and an atypical natural landscape. On the one hand, she travels the region with a camera to immortalize the horizon and its vegetal details. On the other hand, she visits one of her father’s aunts who tells her the history of her family, with photographs. Her eye is drawn to the small bedside tables, whose upper shelf is glazed and serves as a horizontal frame for family photographs. Farah Khelil decides to take up this private and domestic device of monstration and to make it the support of a photographic hybridization. Indeed, Farah Khelil mixes archives and personal photographs and especially flattens them. She blurs our senses, that of depth and perspective, as different images are unified by a gesture of composition. However, she treats these archives not as a memory, but rather as a reflexive mapping of lived experiences. The table is a whole, both in terms of the artistic practice for which it serves as a support, and in terms of its previous history as a domestic object. In this dynamic, Farah abolishes any form of hierarchy between sources, between mediums, between image and text.

Bedside Notes #1, 2017

For the exhibition at the Fiminco Foundation, Farah Khelil will take up this format of bedside tables, this time developing a work of silk-screening texts on placemats. The exhibition ‘Freedom of Sleep’, conceived as an exploration of insomnia, of the desynchronization of bodies and society, gives Farah Khelil the opportunity to explore a new meaning of the bedside table series. The object itself, if it serves as a support for an artistic realization, remains an everyday object, a witness of our nights and our insomnia. The artist uses the object in its totality, from its material condition to its emotional significance. The silk-screened texts are extracts from internet forums where people share their testimony on insomnia. Farah Khelil revisits the medium of text, as so many personal stories to make a work with a universal scope, which will amuse, resonate, question visitors.

Ultimately the work of Farah Khelil is born of a mental, visual and artistic emancipation. Emancipation rhymes with freedom, and it is true freedom that guides Farah to break codes, divert objects and ideas and free herself from rules.
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