Map

Painting, black ink and photo projection, sound installation.
64 x 54 inches
​ 2016- 2017
SOLD

Map is an installation where painting, photography, light and sound interact to engage the viewer in themes of cultural multiplicity, identity, and time.  

​Two black ink paintings are facing each other.  A photography of a body is projected on both. Two soundtracks emerging from each paintings are engaged in a dialogue.  Every minute, light softly turns on.  The photo projection is no longer visible nor is the sound heard, only the black ink figure are present on the canvas. This cycle continues.

​Map explores the demarcation of a body; the history of a body as a territory. This piece also seeks to explore how memory and history shape one’s trajectory through the world, and how the past inhabits and iterates through the present.
The voices in the sound installation are from interviews with the artist’s family, who migrated from Algeria to France in the early 1960s. These voices interact with the spaces of the paintings and projections and activate the intergenerational memory of migration.  What does it mean to exchange one place for another?  What does it mean to assimilate?  What does the territory of this metamorphosis look like?  Who is who?  The elements of Map offer an exploration of an answer.
Ultimately, Map is about time, is a map of time.  While a body lives in a present time and space, the memory of its trajectory can define its identity through its experiences.  What other kinds of time exist?  Where are they located?  What do they look like?  How do they impact the present and iterate the future?  What is their effect on the nature of identity? 

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Map

Translation of soundtrack 1 and 2 for printed booklet (from Berber and French to English): 

Soundtrack 1:
I was born in the Ouadhias
, Algeria.  I remember 
when they would take us to 
the cinema at the barracks 
Mouh d’Arab.  They 
would take us, when they would take us

, we were being

We had to sit with
them in the cinema
and watch the film.  
That’s why they 
would bring women 
and children with 
them.  When the film was 
over we would all be released 
and get back home late.  We didn’t want
to get back 
home late at night. So 
when we would get back home, 
we could eat and sleep.  
Sometimes we could hear the soldiers, sometimes nothing.
 
When we would wake up in the morning
, we couldn’t stop thinking, again today?
 
We didn’t want to go but

, until the film was over.

Soundtrack 2:
My sister was a beautiful girl. 
They got married.  He proposed to her. 
My father and mother agreed.  
He was a good boy and she was a beautiful girl. 
They loved each other but after three years they hadn't had any children 
yet. Her husband was still in love with her, he adored her. 
He would bring her to his village and take her out, it was good. 
But after three years her mother in law started to gossip 
and my parents heard about it. 
They concluded that since their daughter was sterile, her son 
should remarry in order to have children.  His mother 
insisted he marry another woman 
but he didn’t want to.
He even came to our house 
to take my sister back with him. 
At this time women were not allowed to speak up. 
Although she wanted to go back with her husband. 
She was not allowed to 
say anything, the parents were in charge. 
She didn’t have any 
choice and they said no. 
Her husband came back many 
times in vain. 
So he left 
Algeria and migrated to France.  
Later, he married 
a French woman.  
My sister remarried 
with your grandfather, 
through some village’s friends.  
Your grandfather was a man,
he was hard. 
He wasn’t home often, 
he lived in France 
and traveled occasionally
to Algeria where he 
gave her three children.  
Two boys and one girl, 
your mother.

She was doing good though, 
she had huge gardens, fields, everything, 
she had animals,
she was raising chickens
and had a garden upfront.  

She had it all.

There were seven dogs 
all around the house, 
since she lived there on her own with her 
children.  
No one would dare 
going into her house. 
When my mother and I would go 
visit my sister, she had to come get us 
and walk us inside, 
otherwise it was impossible 
because of the dogs.

Her first husband 
who married the French woman 
never had children, 
he was the sterile one. 
It was because of him, 
he never had children. 
The mother 
in-law 
said that my sister 
was sterile.
Her first 
husband worked in France 
for a long time.  
When he retired he 
went back to Algeria 
where he died in 1988.  
He was not even old. 

I went to visit my sister, Yaya, in the thirteenth district of Paris.  
I broke the news. 
She stared at me.

I repeated, yes, 
your first husband,
I said his name. 
Ah… 
That’s all she could say.

That’s it.