Colours of my Dream: Curated by Kami Gahiga
Fabienne Levy is thrilled to announce the opening of “Colours of my Dream” an exhibition curated by Kami Gahiga featuring the works of Amina Benbouchta, M’barek Bouhchichi, Ekene Emeka-Maduka, Longinos Nagila & Alexis Peskine.
The exhibition takes Djibril Samb’s L’interprétation des rêves en Afrique Noire (1998), winner of the Prix Noma, as the starting point of its curatorial line. Samb contends that while Western interpretation of dreams often falls within the individual realm, dreams can hold other meanings that go beyond the single or personal dimension. References to Samb’s book highlight the necessity for plural perspectives that do not confine African literature, creations and artists into a monolith. In “Colours of my Dream”, Amina Benbouchta, M’barek Bouhchichi, Ekene Emeka-Maduka, Longinos Nagila and Alexis Peskine weave their own universe, making us discover a world that combines an array of imaginings. Displayed in this show are pieces created in a range of media that encompass works on paper, painting, sculpture and installations made these last years, as well as new commissions.
Within a unique pictorial universe, each symbolic and deeply poetic work addresses a myriad of inquiries that artists have concerning the world, whether it be the position of women in society expressed through the visual exploration of domestic settings, our imbalanced and unsustainable relation with the environment, racial inequality within a range of landscapes or the constant questioning and refusal of conformity. Dreams become the gateway to escape the limiting confines of narrow viewpoints. Through distinct prisms, Amina Benbouchta, M’barek Bouhchichi, Ekene Emeka-Maduka, Longinos Nagila and Alexis Peskine open the door to new outlooks and deconstruct agreed codes of representation.
Amina Benbouchta is a Moroccan artist born in 1963 working and living between Casablanca and Paris. Benbouchta’s practice deals with the notion of time and involves incorporating floating and static elements in a range of media. Her repertoire of motifs draws from domestic life and investigate the social dynamics around home, family, and childhood.
M’barek Bouhchichi was born in 1975 in Akka, Morocco a place which the artist defines as a historical and geographical margin. His art engages with the concept of space and borders between North and Sub-Saharan Africa, is imbued with poetic exchanges, and rooted in the idea of sharing. He incorporates symbols of traditional Berber art whose principal axiom is the individual within the community.
Ekene Emeka-Maduka was born in 1996 in Kano State (Northern Nigeria) and lives and works in Winnipeg, Canada. Her paintings are based upon her recollection of lived and imagined experiences. Recurrent themes in the artist’s work involve investigating the ‘self’ and the impact that cultural and socio-political exposures have on identity.
Born in 1986, Longinos Nagila is an artist living and working in Nairobi, Kenya. Nagila explores the relationship between surfaces and shapes with works on paper that never appear to represent the same to every viewer. By challenging his audience perspective, Nagila’s works are an invitation to question the hierarchy of standpoints.
Alexis Peskine was born in 1979 in Paris and lives and works between Salvador and Paris. The artist brings his three-dimensional creations to life by using a technique he coined “acu-painting.” His dignified nail-works painted with gold leaf and pierced on coffee-stained wood, inspired by the Nkisi Nkonde (power figures) of the Congo Basin, offer a space of healing and reflection in the face of contemporary violence committed against people of colour.
“Colours of my Dream” blurs the lines between reality and the oneiric and illustrates how Benbouchta, Bouhchichi, Emeka-Maduka, Nagila and Peskine through their vast and diverse approaches, guide us in the navigation of an increasingly complex world.
