Des rives
May 10th – July 6th 2018
Drifting, a variation on the theme of the still life, is the first solo exhibition presented by Maya-Inès Touam, the sixth winner of the Lcc Program. Throughout history, though qualified as minor, this Western artistic genre has born witness to its time, interrogated its symbols, and revealed its consumption habits. Natural elements or artefacts anchor the composition in which they figure, in an identifiable temporality and geography. As if to seek her own geography, the young artist proposes her Drifting series as a personal reinterpretation of synthetic Western-issued codes through a study of the drapery, North African feminine ornaments, and pan-African attributes. Through the process of staging certain cultural allusions, Maya-Inès questions the predominance and value accorded to objects, thus deconstructing their symbolic power. Like Wax – the fabric associated in the collective consciousness with sub-Saharan dress codes, but which was in fact originally manufactured in Holland for the Javanese market – the artist explores the connection to representations as well as notions of consumption and accumulation, the sacrality that defines certain objects, and how they stimulate the historical imagination. Making use of the various presentation modes explored during her Lcc Program residence, Maya-Inès Touam confronts a heritage customarily associated with folkloric representation, and renders it visible through compositions that abandon defined thematic groupings, relying instead upon a delicate aesthetic equilibrium.
