We carried out this installation from September 9 to 16, 2012 on the Digue du Large. A week in front of the sea, drunk with the wind and the sun, doing this ridiculous and magnificent gesture together. The work withstood a force 9 mistral, but not a few human hands. We have seen of our work only what we give you to see here. Barely completed, the installation was destroyed by a passer-by from La Digue and not a single gold leaf was found around it! We will never know what displeased him so much, or perhaps this passer-by got caught up in the work, seeing in it valuable material ? The investigation was vigorously carried out within the Port and will remain unanswered: who stole the gold from Africa ? that was the question asked, they simply told me at the security service secretariat… The two days that followed, we again covered a few blocks with what was left of the adhesive, to finally see from the sea, during a boat trip, the bursts of light from Golden Africa…
Adrift project
Africa under construction
July-August 2021
Wood and gold paint
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The notion of building site is recurrent in the work of Hassan Darsi, like his work whose works feed off each other, enrich each other, from exploration to re-exploitation, from research to diversion. So many exhibits which each time complete a previous work and anticipate another, like a vast construction site... A symbolic construction site, on the scale of a world of political and human issues, societal, ecological and cultural. And as any site, construction or rehabilitation, begins with the erection of scaffolding, it is this first stage, necessary and constructive, which unfolds here as a zero moment marking the beginning of possibilities...
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Africa under constructionimposes itself in space like a scaffolding of wooden interlacings whose partial density underlined with gold lets guess the contours of the African continent. A work that has its source in Morocco's African affiliation and which borrows recurring elements from the artist's work, the color gold, for its emblematic scope and its signaling impact, the architecture and the dimension of scale, for its reference to the creative process.
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(florence renault, august 2021)
