Artistic work
- installazione
Author
Stored in
Tate Modern, Londra (Regno Unito)
Work technique
couscous cotto, tavolo di legno e stampe digitali su carta
Year
Work dimensions
Dimensioni variabili
Link
,
Tags
The central body of the installation has as its object a scale model of Ghardaïa, an ancient city located there in the M'zab valley, in Algeria, made with cooked couscousc, a typical food of the North Africa. The buildings, configured as variations of simple cubic geometric shapes, parallelepiped or hemispherical, are accompanied by three digital prints attached to the walls which surround the sculpture: portraits of the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, of the architect French Fernand Pouillon and a printout of the assessment of the UNESCO advisory body of the M'zab Valley as a World Heritage Site. The artist, born in France of Algerian parents, through the work he intends to reveal the influence of the East on the West, overturning the more usual ones colonial logics. The city of Ghardaïa, which in fact inspired the architects in question, embodies the symbol of the cultural exchange between Algeria and France, denoting a push that starts from Africa to Europe. In addition, many French urban housing blocks built by Le Corbusier will then be inhabited by North African immigrants, another ironic parallel underlined by Attia.