ART-PRESENTATION: Bouchra Khalili-The Templest Society
It does not matter whether the works in Bouchra Khalili’s solo exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, are older or newer, they are definitely timeless, since the issue of immigration, it may look like it has been raging today, but it is an issue that exists and is a burning issue decades back.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Jeu de Paume Archive
Bouchra Khalili’s exhibition “Blackboard”, which we had present in our magazine, is really excellent, although I still have objections for the way the videos are presented in Jeu de Paume, making them difficult for the viewer to watch them. In our presentation we focus in her video ‘’The Templest Society’’ (2017) that premiered in Athens School of Fine Art at Documenta 14 in Athens, seems to summarize all her work. The duration is 60 minutes, but I actually watched it three times, until the closing of the space was, recording the experience and reactions of the other viewers around me, I realized that it really kept the interest of all unimpaired. An old French lady, at the end, applauded, I was unimaginably moved as several others. And that’s not because the artist used the Greek Language, nor of the circumstances, because that everyone who emigrates faces different types of difficulties, but because it records the reality in the most intense, pure and objective way. “We were Cultural Immigrants, My Child”, told me once, the Greek Artist Vlassis Kaniaris, the most radical Dean of School of Fine Arts in Athens (ASFA), who lived almost his entire life In Paris and Berlin and returned in Athens after the fall of dictatorship, wanting to explain me that we don’t differ from the so-called “economic immigrants”, he wasn’t wrong. “Templest Society” is balancing documentary and video art and this makes it even more vivid and direct to the viewer. It testifies great truths as “Athens is a city that inhabits most of the country’s population, but it is also a city where the phenomenon of Immigration is very intense even the inward labour migration”. In another point mentions George Seferis’s saying “The heroes are progressing in the dark”, that summarizes the history of the Greek nation from the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922) to the present day, joining the Immigration thread with France, as the work’s title pay homage to Al Assifa (The Tempest in Arabic) a theatre Group active in Paris in the 70’s composed of North-African immigrant workers and French students that addressed the daily struggle against inequality and racism in France, and then extending it to today’s Europe. “The Tempest Society” is an excellent, meaningful and very touching video, which discusses the major historical, political, social and civic truths, it references the big decisions, the victory of “No” at the referendum of the July 5, 2015 and the historical responsibility that the Greek people had that night, when all the people of Europe believed in us. But the reaction of many international leaders as well as mainstream economists and media as well as the overturn of the people’s decision by the Greek government, made everyone understood that the role of the Citizen is insignificant in front of the Above Decisions. The artwork rises to a crescendo with a song, performed by three musicians from different countries, from the ultra-homeland of Art that unites people, this is the message. “Sometimes poverty, sometimes wealth, I play the Oud.”
Info: Curators: Bouchra Khalili, Juan Antonio Álvarez Reyes and Marta Gili, Jeu de Paume, 1 place de la Concorde, Paris, Duration: 5/6-23/9/18, Days & Hours: Tue 11:00-21:00, Wed-Sun 11:00-19:00, www.jeudepaume.org
