Katia Kameli, Untitled, 2011.
| Date: | 12 July 2012 |
| Time: | 19:00 – 20:30 |
| Venue: | Delfina Foundation |
During the second stage of her residency with Delfina Foundation, Katia Kameli will be in conversation with independent curator Berenice Saliou about her film and video work, in particular films Untitled (2011) and Storyteller (2012).
Works
Untitled, 2011. Video HD, 2mins 28secs
Cardboards boxes strewn alongside a pavement are seen to form a peculiar assemblage. We can recognise them as makeshift shelters. Made from the refuse of our consumer society, these cardboards boxes become facades. From this fragile architecture, a woman emerges and makes a placard that contains no slogan; a wordless piece of cardboard. While raising the placard, the woman is joined by other women. The silent uprising is then set in motion. Can it be considered a revolution?
The Storyteller, 2012. Video HD, 12mins
This film was shot and projected in an unfinished box-seat in the Théâtre Royal as part of the 4th Marrakech Biennale. Featuring a local storyteller typically in residence in the main square Jemaa el Fna, his more or less official occupation is to transform popular Bollywood films into the Arabic oral tradition, thereby expanding the audience for this cinema at the same time as competitively offering cut-rate prices. Naturally, a host of plot details might be lost or reinvented through retelling; cut together with footage from the film simultaneously being described, Kameli’s piece cycles through both French- and English-subtitled loops, her subject continuously narrating the adventures of two young boys who busk their way to fortune, ceaselessly coming full circle in layered explication.
Biogrpahy
Bérénice Saliou’s curatorial practice explores the ideas of borders, territory, public space, dialogue and negotiation. She holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths College in 2010 and is particularly interested in the North African artistic scene. Recently she curated projects and exhibitions such as: Fayd by Mohamed El Mahdaoui in Tétouan’s medina (Morocco); the collective exhibition Depth of Fields (2010) at Gallery FJ in Casablanca; No Signal Found (2011), the first solo show by emerging artist Younes Baba Ali at Gallery Arte Contemporanea in Brussels; Duty Free, the first solo by Katia Kameli at Vidéochroniques in Marseilles (2012); and Seven Acts of love in seven days of boredom by Katia Kameli at Transpalettes in Bourges (2012). Saliou regularly writes for magazines and galleries such as Arte Contexto (Spain), Catalogue Magazine (UK), Universes in Universe (Germany), and Gallery Imane Farès (Paris). As Artistic Director of the Moroccan organisation Feddan (established with artist Younes Rahmoun in 2010), she currently develops its large scale permanent residency and exhibition project Trankat Street that will open in 2013 in Tétouan (Morocco), as part of Marseilles 2013, European Cultural Capital.