A World Out There

 
 
Nadia_Guerroui_A_World_Out_There_2017_4
 

Photos Hugard & Vanoverschelde

For the Window Project, entitled A World out There, Guerroui explores the frontiers of the window. The work, which is made up of different multiples, isn’t only located behind the display window. It’s also spread out in the public space where it carries on an intimate dialogue with the (possibly accidental) observer. The work not only transcends the spatial barriers, but as a navigating, nomadic work of art it also breaks through the conventional length of time and rigidity of an exhibition.

 

«When I was a kid, I loved the sun: I was closing my eyes, seeing it through my eyeslids, it was red. The sun was terrible, It reminded of an explosion: Was there something more solar than the red blood running on the pavement, as if the light was bursting and killing? In this opaque night, I made myself drunk from light.»
Le Bleu du Ciel, George Bataille

A small, ambiguous object is the basis of the project and her research into ‘metonymy’ or a shifting of the meaning of everyday objects. Due to its small dimensions and illusory quality, the object evokes associations with a playing card, a bookmark or a talisman. The work undermines meanings; it is an ode to the banal, precarious, unpredictable and the contingent at a moment when such notions seem to be losing importance. Or, as Guerroui insinuates, at a moment when people get lost without applications like Google Maps, previously Google Local, search engines and online dictionaries.

 

«There is a scenography of pending: I organise, I manipulate it, I cut time into a fragment of time where I will mimic the loss of the beloved object and provoke all the effects of a litlle mourning. So it is like a little theatre play. »
Fragments du discours amoureux (L’attente), Roland Barthes.

The multiples will be placed in the urban fabric by the artist during and after the exhibition in one of the three forms. Either as a bookmark in a book in a public library, as a talisman in the wallet of a visitor, coincidental passers-by or friend of the artist, or as a playing card scattered on the streets of metropolises all over the world. The ‘Nachleben’ or survival of images and motives throughout art history, which the German art historian Aby Warburg once defined as the central concept within art, is given an original and almost literal interpretation.

Charlotte Crevits