Drift, 2019
Oil painting
68 x 52 in. (172 x 132 cm.)
Available

Drift is part of a new body of work that uses materials such as found drift wood and photographs of patterns found in nature collected during a recent trip to visit family overseas.
This piece explores how perception, history, and memory intertwine; their substances penetrating and influencing each other.

Drift is a way of thinking alienation and territory, themes that I have been considering in my other bodies of works, especially in relation to postcolonialism and the representation of figures within different histories.
As an expat from France, of Algerian heritage, I always think of myself as living in an alternate dimension from my family, which is already diffuse and complex. With this idea in mind, I was interested in exploring how different lines or paths converge by enacting a structure of the repetitions and reiterations of perception and memory, culminating in the rendition of a semi-abstract figure.

“Think of the brain as a hill covered of snow, and thoughts as sleds gliding down the hill. As one sled after another goes down the hill, a small number of main trails will appear in the snow.  And everytime a new sled goes down, it will be drawn into the pre existing trails, almost like a magnet”. (Mendel Kaelen)