Heavier than Words

By Mounir Fatmi

"Cross-culturally, fatmi questions the boundaries of memory, communication and language. The deconstruction of language and machine as communication tools is another focus. In his artistic practice, he often uses discarded apparatuses and objects of analog communication technology and sends their codes and rules through a prism of architecture, language, and machine. This is also the case for "Inside the Fire Circle" in our exhibition. The artwork consists of a network of seventeen old typewriters interconnected by a large number of red and black jump-start cables. In mounir fatmi's multifaceted artworks in this exhibition, the main focus is the relationship between language and thought, language and perception, language and understanding. "
Conrads Gallery, June 2021

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mounir Fatmi
• Release date: Oct 29, 2021

Mounir Fatmi

mounir fatmi is a visual artist born in Tangier, Morocco in 1970. He constructs visual spaces and linguistic games. His work deals with the desecration of religious objects, deconstruction, and the end of dogmas and ideologies. He questions the world and plays with its codes and precepts under the prism of architecture, language and the machine. He is particularly interested in the idea of the role of the artist in a society in crisis. mounir fatmi's work offers a look at the world from a different glance, refusing to be blinded by convention. He brings to light our doubts, fears and desires.He has published several books and art catalogs including: The Kissing Precise, with Régis Durand, La Muette edition, Brussels, 2013, Suspect Language, with Lillian Davies, Skira edition, Italy, 2012, This is not blasphemy, in collaboration with Ariel Kyrou, Inculte-Dernier Marge & Actes Sud edition, 2015, History is not Mine, SF Publishing, Paris, 2015, and Survival Signs, SF Publishing, Paris, 2017. He has also participated in the collective book, Letter to a young Moroccan, edition Seuil, Paris, 2009.He has participated in several solo and collective exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world including: Mamco, Geneva, The Picasso Museum, Vallauris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, The Brooklyn Museum, New York, N.B.K., Berlin, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, MAXXI, Rome, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, the Hayward Gallery, London, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.His installations have been selected in biennials such as the 52nd and the 57th Venice Biennial, the 8th biennial of Sharjah, the 5th Dakar Biennial, the 2nd Seville Biennial, the 5th Gwangju Biennial and the 10th Lyon Biennial, the 5th Auckland Triennial, Fotofest 2014, Houston, the 10th and 11th Bamako Encounters, as well as the 7th Biennale of Architecture in Shenzhen.mounir fatmi was awarded several prizes such as the Cairo Biennial Prize in 2010, the Uriöt prize, Amsterdam, the Grand Prize Leopold Sedar Senghor of the 7th Dakar Biennial in 2006 as well and he was shortlisted for the Jameel Prize of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London in 2013.

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We are delighted to announce our third solo exhibition with mounir fatmi in the new gallery space in Berlin-Mitte. Photographs, videos, sculptures and a large installation will be on show.

mounir fatmi, who participates in numerous international biennials since years, grew up in Casablanca in a traditionally Arab Muslim environment, but left Morocco at the age of seventeen to study art in Rome. Postgraduate studies in Casablanca and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam followed. Already in his early works, he explored Western modernism, particularly fascinated by minimalism and conceptual art. He questions these concepts against the background of his own culture. Confronting Western concepts with fragments from the traditional Islamic tradition, he creates his own aesthetics, which can be understood as metaphors for the dynamics of globalized social processes and the resulting conflicts.

Cross-culturally, fatmi questions the boundaries of memory, communication and language. The deconstruction of language and machine as communication tools is another focus. In his artistic practice, he often uses discarded apparatuses and objects of analog communication technology and sends their codes and rules through a prism of architecture, language, and machine. This is also the case for Inside the Fire Circle in our exhibition. The artwork consists of a network of seventeen old typewriters interconnected by a large number of red and black jump-start cables.

The sculpture Heavier Than Words, to which the exhibition owes its title, consists of a beam scale and a collection of weights and Arabic characters from heavy steel stacking in one of the two scale pans. The scale allows immediate visual assessment of the difference in weight between two objects. naturally it tilts to the heavier side. At first glance everything seems normal, but in fact the sculpture exhibits the paradox of defying gravity and is tilting significantly to the side with the empty bowl. The physical conundrum posed by this sculpture evokes questions: about emptiness from a scientific perspective, about the power of thought, and that of the weight that the spoken word can have. What is more powerful than language? What metaphors do we find for what exists beyond our conceptual