Kissing Circles: Analix Forever

By Mounir Fatmi

"In the exhibition “Kissing Circles,” mounir fatmi presents a photographic series inspired by the kiss in the film Casablanca, a series he has been working on for several years, and perhaps, unconsciously, ever since his childhood, when he first lived in Casablanca, and the kiss... In fatmi’s kisses a thousand references converge, notably the kiss that recently excited two young lovers in Morocco and the whole of their country with them, implicitly asking these questions: are a kiss and its representation to be condemned? Should they be censored? And a thousand obsessions, too: fatmi’s obsession with beauty, with black and white, with archives, science and poetry. “The Kissing Precise,” writes mounir fatmi, “connects a Hollywood kiss and the film of my adolescence with my combined obsessions with mastery and poetry, including a winner of a Nobel Prize for Chemistry, a geometry of feelings, a surprising poem about circles touching and, finally, two young Moroccans who, with their love, threw a whole society into tumult, and the world in which I live. Yes, everything is desire, everything is poetry, everything is science, everything is art and, finally, everything is politics.” "

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mounir Fatmi
• Release date: Nov 2, 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.

Book preview

KISSING CIRCLES

mounir fatmi

KISSING CIRCLES

mounir fatmi

This publication was made on the occasion of the solo exhibition Kissing Circles at the gallery Analix Forever in Geneva, Switzerland, by moroccan artist mounir fatmi, from May 6th to June 21 st, 2014.

Curator: Barbara Polla

© 2020 mounir fatmi

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

Published by: mounir fatmi

Cover Design: Studio Fatmi

Cover Photography: mounir fatmi

Table of Contents

Forward

Casablanca Circles

Soddy

Vichy Water

The Ring

Technologia

The Kissing Precise

Kissing Circles Show

Biography

Colophon

Forward

A year after his last exhibition in Geneva (May 2013), and a year before his upcoming solo show at the MAMCO (spring 2015), mounir fatmi is back in Geneva, this time with a set of photographs and a book all about a kiss.

The kiss is an extraordinarily rich subject in the history of art, from Antiquity to the Renaissance, from Fragonard