Latifa Echakhch
Encrage (L'air du temps), 2014 Perfume bottle, Chinese ink, wooden decorative cloud, canvas, acrylic paint and steel wire
Dimensions
250 × 100 × 100 cm
About the work
First, look at Encrage (L’air du temps) from one side. You see a black, cloud-like form suspended from chains. Beneath it is a bottle of Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps perfume.
Now imagine walking around the work. Viewed from the other side, the image changes. What initially appeared to be a dark cloud suddenly reveals itself as a painted cloud. The sense of menace created by the first view disappears.
This shift is central to Echakhch’s work. The piece was created for her exhibition at the Centre Pompidou following the 2013 Prix Marcel Duchamp. She wanted to compress a landscape, as it were, into different planes or layers: sky, earth, clouds and water.
The black ink simultaneously evokes something that has passed and been brought to a standstill, as well as actions that have yet to take place. This creates a play of shifting viewpoints and perspectives. Depending on where you stand, the same object can produce an entirely different impression.
Latifa Echakhch
° 1974 in El Khnansa, Morocco. At the age of three, she moved with her parents from Morocco to France. She graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon in 2002 and subsequently settled in Switzerland.
Echakhch participated in Manifesta 7 in 2008, the Venice Biennale in 2011, the Biennale of Sydney in 2012 and the Sharjah Biennial in 2013, among others. In 2013, she was awarded the Prix Marcel Duchamp.
In her work, she examines the systems and structures underlying major cultural issues of our time. The differences between her Moroccan background and the French culture to which she belongs also form an important part of her artistic practice.