Inside the Fire Circle

By Mounir Fatmi

"Inside the Fire Circle uses obsolete objects to help reinforce the idea of history repeating itself and of the power of art to make a difference. The central installation of Mounir Fatmi’s new exhibition gives the show its name. Inside the Fire Circle features a row of old-fashioned typewriters on an iron frame. From these obsolete objects, black and red jump leads spill out, the ends clipped to a page of plain, white paper. Initially this might seem to question the transfer of information and provide a visual representation of the development of digital and future technologies – but it is also about the past.
“With this installation, I want people to remember history,” says Fatmi, a French-Moroccan artist, of his first solo show in Dubai. “Unfortunately people have a short-term memory these days.” Fatmi describes the work as an aesthetic trap that draws viewers in but throws them into a circular motion of repetition. “All these materials are going to disappear, so they are historical, but there is the notion of archive, which is constantly present,” he says. “We see history repeating itself over and over again, like a palimpsest.” Palimpsest is a word for a manuscript or other writing surface that has been reused or altered but which still has visible traces of its original form. This installation then, reflects the artist’s preoccupation with the circle, a recurring symbol throughout his practice.
On the wall are several pieces made with coaxial antennae cables – another largely obsolete object – arranged and fixed in partly-circular and geometric patterns, encased in glass boxes. Again, they draw the viewer in to the idea of repetition and infinity but also pick up the theme of physical material that is now part of history, soon to be discarded from use and, perhaps, even from memory.
By using such objects, Fatmi raises the question of whether when something is forgotten, does it mean it never existed? Why do we often fail to learn the lessons of history? If an incident falls out of the reaches of archive or memory, it can happen again, and we risk making the same mistakes.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mounir Fatmi
• Release date: Nov 3, 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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Lawrie Shabibi is pleased to present "Inside the Fire Circle" mounir fatmi’s first solo exhibition in Dubai. The exhibition expands on the artist’s interest in the circle, its form and symbolic meaning throughout history. In particular, fatmi examines the life of John Howard Griffin (1920 –1980), an American activist, journalist and author from Texas, who wrote about racial equality and was known for his fight against racial discrimination during the Civil Rights Movement. These two seemingly opposing themes connect through Fatmi’s interest in the idea of repetition, erasure, movement, and the tendency of history to repeat itself. As stated by art critic Lillian Davies in fatmi’s monograph Suspect Language Fatmi’s use of the circle marks a symbolic refutation of linearity.

At the center of the exhibition is Inside the Fire Circle a new sculptural installation from which the exhibition takes its name. Consisting of a configuration of jumper cables that spill out from a set of obsolete typewriters, their ends clipped to sheets of plain white paper, the installation reveals itself as a palimpsest of history, repeating itself over and over again.

Other works in the show referencing the circle include wall sculptures produced from white coaxial cable. Encased in glass boxes, the cables have been intricately manipulated into repeating circles, creating a sense of addition and subtraction – or infinity. This examination of the circle recurs regularly in fatmi’s practice such as in his work Modern Times, A History of the Machine, his series of looped videos such as Technologia, and a body of work entitled, Kissing Precise.

Several works in the exhibition use images from the John Howard Griffin Archive (to which fatmi had been granted access thanks to Roberto Bonazzi) with a focus on an experiment in the late 1950s and early 1960s when Griffin underwent a series of UV treatments and took various medications to turn his skin black. In this project he was temporarily able to pass as a black man and journey through the Deep South of 1959 to see life and segregation. He published his experiences in his book Black Like Me outlining the hardship, the discrimination and rejection that he faced. A series of 10 photographs entitled, As A Black Man, consists of a portrait of Griffin, each image printed to create a gradation from white to gray to black.

In another set of black and white photographs entitled Crossing the