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
Marhabane
Marhabane is a work born from the architectural project of the Casablanca LGV station, a monumental work that is part of a landmark in a resolutely contemporary architecture stretching like a bridge over the network of railway tracks. For this place of transit, Hassan Darsi has imagined a work that extends its main function, welcoming the millions of travelers who will cross its spaces, but which also extends the architectural project by a symbolic footbridge.
Marhabane is a sphere more than four meters in diameter made of interlacing gilded wood assembled in scaffolding. A shape hollowed out in its center suggests the contours of the African continent, an Africa of which Morocco would constitute the junction point with Europe, a junction of which Casablanca would become the strategic epicenter. In the void left by the absence of structure, float 29 words and as many languages, among the most used in Africa, to wish "welcome" to passing travelers. A way for the artist both to underline the African belonging of Morocco and to signify the welcoming dimension of a station
Marhabane takes its source in the very vocation of the place where it is inscribed at the same time as it borrows recurring elements from the work of Hassan Darsi: the color gold for its emblematic significance and its signaling impact ("Or d'Afrique", "Golden Jetty", …); the reference to architecture, to the process of construction and to its unfinished dimension (“Amulets”, “Chantiers en or”, “Les réparateurs du ciel”, …).
