Keeping Faith, Keeping Drawing

By Mounir Fatmi

"mounir fatmi’s drawings might still remain confidential, they are nonetheless fundamental. The artist is widely renowned for his large-scale installations, his sculptures and now also for his videos and photographs, but he has always been drawing. Not only that – some of his drawing date back to 1995 and 1996, but the artist, often critical of his own work, has discarded many of them – the ones that remain, therefore particularly precious, touch upon the fundamental themes in Mounir Fatmi’s work: scissors, cutting, whether of the umbilical cord or of the tongue and language; amputation, cultural rupture, the necessity to create new connections in order to survive; and finally transplants, whether physical, bodily or cultural."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mounir Fatmi
• Release date: Nov 8, 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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Keeping Faith, Keeping Drawing

mounir fatmi’s drawings might still remain confidential, they are nonetheless fundamental. The artist is widely renowned for his large-scale installations, his sculptures and now also for his videos and photographs, but he has always been drawing. Not only that – some of his drawing date back to 1995 and 1996, but the artist, often critical of his own work, has discarded many of them – the ones that remain, therefore particularly precious, touch upon the fundamental themes in mounir fatmi’s work: scissors, cutting, whether of the umbilical cord or of the tongue and language; amputation, cultural rupture, the necessity to create new connections in order to survive; and finally transplants, whether physical, bodily or cultural. Fatmi says: You will find in there a mutilated and recomposed body, like an apparition; a body with no legs, a leg found in another drawing and an umbilical cord that connects bodies; and many details that can be found in my videos.

The combination of the three colors red, white and black is typical of mounir fatmi’s drawings. They tend to form a chromatic code both symbolic and emotional. Red: the link; white: forgetfulness; black: the hope of giving an at least temporary form to unstable and fragile graphic appearances, sometimes close to evanescence: thus, in Animation (a series of drawings initiated in 1998), fine silhouettes of migratory storks and various names of countries are superimposed on series of curves and loops such as cables or umbilical cords. Red, white and black.

Since 2015, fatmi has been considering drawing as an intense activity that develops itself around its essential work themes: migration, exile, identity, the body, in particular with the series The Island of Roots. The series Everything is Connected and White Matter are also materializations of fatmi obsessions: fragility, links, connections, our brain … white matter transmits nerve impulses and spreads information in the nervous system; the myelin surrounding the axons is responsible for the rapid conduction of the electrical signal. White Matter is already the subject of a book: the book, so fragile, so multiple, also fundamental to mounir fatmi and which transmits information since human history exists.

Drawing is the basis of everything, Giacometti asserted; fatmi tells us that the link is the basis of the drawing, this link that perpetuates faith, thanks to the pencil.

Barbara Polla, November 2019

White Matter

The series of black & white drawings White Matter, created using acrylic paint on sandpaper, exhibits