In collaboration with Numéro art
Adel Abdessemed, who came to prominence in the early 2000s, has marked the beginning of the 21st century with provocative new works, which openly criticize the taboos of our society and the violence of our world. The Algerian-born artist is presenting a solo exhibition at Galleria Continua (until late January 2023), which brings together a wide range of recent work influenced both by poetry and current tragedies, from the fate of migrants in the Mediterranean sea to the war in Ukraine.
Numéro: You are presenting an exhibition of museum-like dimensions in the heart of Paris at Galleria Continua. The place also includes a grocery store, a bookshop, and a restaurant. How did you design your exhibition in this hybrid space spreading across three floors?
Adel Abdessemed: My parents taught me two rules – always say ‘please and thank you’ and to respect the places I visit, whatever their layout and surface area may be. When I enter a place, I stab it without damaging it. I am a bit like a marathon runner. The space given to me is my breath. Like an athlete warming up to prepare his body before physical effort, I prepare my works and exhibitions by reading books and listening to music. With me, the lost corner of a space is as important as its most visible corner. When I install an artwork, like on the ground floor of Galleria Continua, I immediately think about the works that will be on the floor above it, as if in a sense we were walking around in a brain.
Where did these new artworks come from and how did you link them together?
As soon as something strikes me, I get inspired by it. I work a lot from my emotions and current events, and I need time to digest them. You must crush the grapes well in order to make good wine; you must crush the fruit well in order to make good olive oil; and you must work the stone well in order to make a good sculpture...The preparation of this exhibition took place in my studio, my own little cave, starting with a model. It was composed like a symphony, giving birth to myriads of melodies, even if each piece was made separately and differed from the others. It is like being a musician – we need the notes, richness, and inspiration. The most beautiful symphonies come to us when we walk in a forest and listen to the sun, the trees, and the birds. An exhibition is a forest of luminous ideas, emotions, and sensations, an invitation to leave Plato’s cave and become a kind of fire thief. But it can also prick or irritate us because we sometimes encounter thorns. The writer James Baldwin once compared the artist to a lover because, like love, art opens our eyes to show us what we cannot see. That is what an exhibition is for – opening our eyes to what surrounds us, to what is happening right now, to elements that are full of promises but also dangers.
For your solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 2012, you displayed the famous photograph entitled Je suis innocent [2012], in which you are standing in flames in the street near your Parisian studio. In the two self-portraits you are exhibiting at Galleria Continua 10 years later, you are no longer on fire...
Indeed, I am now holding a flaming globe in the black sculpture of myself that’s part of the show. In my video Jam proximus ardet, la dernière vidéo [2021] the fire appeared behind me on a boat. Standing alone at the front of the ship, I wasn’t running away from the fire, yet the fire didn’t touch me either, unlike in I am innocent. That video was about movement, about the tragedies that still occur daily in the Mediterranean sea. What I wanted to say is that when your neighbor’s house is burning, the artist cannot remain indifferent to the fire – he is not seeking to provoke it but to approach it.
You mentioned the diversity of emotions and sensations at work here. As we go through the exhibition, we are also struck by the myriad of techniques presented. It is pretty unusual for a solo exhibition. Did you feel freer in your proposal here than in some of your previous projects?
I always feel free, that won’t change. I have a reputation for annoying people, of being prickly. That’s a given now. Those who choose to work with me have to accept that, and too bad for those who don’t want to. I don’t care. It is my form of freedom, and it is important to me, unless someone offers me a relevant criticism about me or my work. My emotional life is difficult enough on a daily basis, so I don’t want to justify all my artistic choices in addition to that...
Alongside sculptures and videos, you are exhibiting several recent charcoal drawings, which is one of your oldest media. What is your relationship with this technique today?
Drawing is my first language. I started expressing myself with it as a child and I have never stopped using it since. I am about to turn 52 and I don’t intend to toss it aside now. I'm not a very good draftsman, but I would say that I can capture emotions and energy on paper. I often quote Henri Matisse’s phrase, which is so bright and brilliant: ‘For me, drawing is a painting with limited means’. This is very true, and it is indeed true throughout the history of art.
Your works regularly address current events, from the September 11 attacks in New York and the 2005 riots in the suburbs of Paris and elsewhere in France to the living conditions in Guantanamo, translated in your sculptures through barbed wire...Here, you are presenting drawings and bas-reliefs of Ukrainian refugees and soldiers – victims of an ongoing war. How did you have the necessary distance to translate such events into an artistic form in such a short time?
It took me years to process some events, like Zinedine Zidane headbutting Marco Materazzi, which I made into a monumental bronze sculpture in 2012, six years after the World Cup final. Angela Merkel, I portrayed naked in a marble sculpture as one of the three Graces. But with Ukraine, the inspiration came to me directly. When the conflict started a few months ago, I couldn’t sleep at night. I couldn’t help it, I had to create artworks out of it. This country is on our doorstep, and it is unbearable to see the exodus of children leaving their homes along with their mothers and pets to migrate to unknown lands. It is terrifying and almost biblical – like seeing Noah’s Ark.
Generally speaking, your work is often imbued with the theme of exile, especially yours from Algeria to France. What is your relationship with your home country today?
I always say that I was born twice – first in Algeria in 1971, then in France, where I moved permanently in 1994. At that time, nobody really talked about terrorism and the dangers of Islamism threatening our lives...I was seen as the one crying wolf. I was not taken seriously. Then the 2015 attacks happened in Paris. Suddenly, some friends and even journalists came to me saying: ‘It is incredible, I understand some of your work now, and I finally see what you meant at the time!’ I lived through Daech before Daech.
Matthieu Jacquet is a journalist and art critic based in Paris. He writes about art and fashion for Numéro and Numéro art.
This article is part of a yearlong collaboration between Paris+ par Art Basel and Numéro art. Click here for the original article.
‘Out, Out, Brief Candle’
Adel Abdessemed
Until January 21, 2023
Galleria Continua, Paris
English translation: Emma Naroumbo Armaing