Mémoire promise #3
2016 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
70 x 100 cm
Nidhal Chamekh
Nidhal Chamekh made the first drawings of the ongoing series Mémoire Promise in 2013. In the series, the artist persistently dissects, examines and describes his experiences and memories of his family and life in Tunis, Tunisia. As underlined by poet Arafat Sadallah, the artist draws eyes and gazes of unachieved portraits, hands and arms of a skeleton—figures disappear but they witness and testify. In writing on the work Sadallah writes: “Life is unachievable, infinite, torn. However at moments broken, ruptured. And through these ruptures and breaks give promise to a gift of sight and the possibility to witness, to be present in the world as a witness to … what exactly? What, who and where do we witness? Perhaps one can only witness the suspense of the question.” The Mémoire Promise series questions the role of the artist as witness.
Based between his native Tunis and Paris, Nidhal Chamekh’s work is an investigation into history as a point of access to our contemporary times. Drawing on both biography and politics, his work takes the form of drawing, installation, photography and videos. His drawings demonstrate a technique that is perpetually developed and challenged through his employment of a variety tools including pencil, brush, bread, charcoal and sponge. Despite the experimental application method, his execution is precise in its pursuit to replicate and observe reality. His line, essentially fragmented, draws on all eras and confuses spaces and cultures. We could consider his work as a sampler of the chaos of history developing cross-sections of this chaos and constituting a kind of social and cultural archaeology that renders the historical complexity of images perceptible.
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