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Spicy “turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, henna” (2015)
video installation
4 screen projection
7’00’’ loop each
edition of 4 + 2 AP
Ed 1 : Private collection
Ed 2 : FRAC Pays de la Loire
Production in: Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres (BE)
At first glance, the four screens show us the breaking waves and picturesque clouds advancing from the background, eventually covering the artist’s face entirely. We quickly realize that pigments are raining down on him, but we are unable to immediately identify which ones they are. They are the four spices—turmeric, cinnamon, ginger and henna powder—which the artist has customarily used in his works. As always in his work, the spices or other ingredients are diverted from their first, dietary function. They are used for their color or texture, as seen in the works which feature hourglasses, whose conventional sand is replaced by the semolina of couscous. The illusion is perfect and, knowing this, the gaze projected onto the work is altered. That which could have appeared as anecdotal is considered in a different manner, with the cultural dimension definitively taking precedent over any reading of the work as gimmick.
Bernard Marcelis
(extrait du texte Des dispositifs d’une pensée hybride)
