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
Family portraits II (Casablanca faces)
French Institute of Casablanca
Gallery 121
July 2002
Series of 16 portraits
Photo credit: Studio Rachid, Maârif-Casablanca
Installation of objects: Florence Renault
The idea of presenting, like a cabinet of curiosities, the objects chosen by the families to accompany their portrait, was born in the artist's studio. Over the days and the shots, the objects took their place on a table, just placed, without any arrangement. Moved from their everyday life to my own place of life, they then took on another dimension... Each day enriched by a new element, this draft installation took on the appearance of a collection, a heterogeneous and somewhat strange collection, arousing both curiosity and respect. All these objects, down to the most modest, functional and everyday, are objects of culture. At the same time, their diversity and specificity are intimately linked to the history and life of each family, or of one of the family members to whom the sometimes difficult choice of the object has been entrusted in a consensual manner. To extract them from their private context to expose them to a public gaze is to underline their value, whether symbolic, mnemonic, religious... At the same time as to highlight, by the very transposition, the particular relationship that each family maintains with its object.
Considered as the ancestor of museums, the cabinet of curiosities (appeared between the 16th century and the 17th century in Europe) is the place where the multiple dimensions of objects belonging to the most varied fields come together; certain cabinets of curiosities were thus qualified as Theater of the world. The cabinet of curiosities of the Casablanca Faces is, reduced to the scale of about twenty families, a small theater of emotions, memories, symbols...
Florence Renault
