Although Nasreddine Bennacer does not seek to construct an argument or convey a message in his work, it is a form of necessity in the face of the world's evolutions, a poetic impulse against adversity, a movement, perhaps. It also crystallises something deeply intimate, a quest for identity in a pendulum movement, a hybridity, and an inner revolt.
AFIKARIS gallery welcomes for the first time the French-Algerian artist Nasreddine Bennacer (Guelma, 1967). Bennacer moved to France in 1991, at the beginning of the black decade, and for more than twenty years has been developing a practice mainly focussed on drawing - in which he explores the different materials, tools and processes - while also trying his hand at photography, video and sculpture. Although he does not seek to construct an argument or convey a message in his work, it is a form of necessity in the face of the world's evolutions, a poetic impulse against adversity, a movement, perhaps. It also crystallises something deeply intimate, a quest for identity in a pendulum movement, a hybridity, and an inner revolt.
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On the wall, Berber characters fade away on a vaporous background (Untitled, 2020-2023). As the paintings progress, they gradually disappear, melting into the fog, just like memory fades away in ignorance. Through this series, one senses the evocation of the memory deficit perceived in Algerian society, and within the artist's own family: although the child of a Kabyle mother, this history is not transmitted to him, and thus fatally disappears. But at the same time, it leaves its mark, intensely: the forgotten language escapes by the current, and is sedimented in the depths of the sea.
The sea sediments memories, languages and forgotten dreams. It is also the liquid border that connects and separates the wall and the horizon. In Je respire sous l'eau (2019), writing turns into indecipherable signs. It evokes the last letter of a Syrian migrant who never reached the shore, awakening the memory of this tragically missing child. He writes:
"Thank you, O sea, which welcomed us without visa or passport, thank you for the fish that will share my flesh without asking me any questions [...]"
Carried away by the waves, the child becomes one with the fish of the sea. And the fish in the sea become one with the castaways of the world, swirling like a huge column, moving as one body to escape predation. In Go With the Flow I (2017), the swirling bench embodies the vital drive that sees lives, languages and histories come together. Here again, hope and violence, escape and sedimentation.
On the ground, a remnant of a beach where the sea washes up in the foam of hopes. On its sand walks the one who seeks (Je remonte la trace de mes pas, 2017). As one tries to find one's trace on the beach swept away by the winds and the tide. As one goes up the meanders of a jostled memory. As one travels along the path, in search of an identity that never stands still. As one sets out on a journey, into the past but towards the future - "I follow the tracks of my footsteps, in the hope of finding where I come from".
On the horizon, two large circles are suspended between earth and sky, one almost eclipsing the other. This is Manzil and Sarab (2023) – again an oscillation between two words and two realities, the house and the mirage. Their perfectly circular shape may refer to the thousands of parabolas covering the roofs of Algiers, to which Nasreddine Bennacer has dedicated a series of works named after one of the city's nicknames: El Bahdja for "the joyful". The artist has long returned to these objects that have grown on the capital like mushrooms with uncontrolled development, covering it almost entirely. He observed, photographed and drew them, fascinated by their profound ambiguity: these antennas, which were supposed to open a door to the world, closed people in on themselves and isolated them in their interiors. The house and the mirage, here again. And a youthful memory, which fixes a much deeper feeling, a questioning, a confrontation with the memory of a bygone past. This is also what it means to retrace one's steps.
One enters Nasreddine Bennacer's work as if into a diary. Page after page, we read his research, his reactions to the world's pulsations, to history and its consequences. As in a diary, there is no demonstration or explanation, the work is not didactic or even metaphorical, it does not articulate but whispers in signs and symbols, in the spontaneity of the drawing. A search that comes from within, that the paper receives and develops in turn.
Curated by Grégoire Prangé
